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EUROPE SINCE 1870 



EUROPE 

SINCE 1870 

BY 
EDWARD RAYMOND TURNER, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 

AUTHOR OF 
"EUROPE, 1789-1920," ETC. 




GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1921 






COPYRIGHT, 1921, BT 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE A COMPANY 

ALL BIGHTS RESEBVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 

TBAN8LATION INTO FOBEIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



,, g)C!,A622670 

SEP -^ "^'•' 



a^C I 



TO 
MY BROTHER 

JAMES FLYNN TURNER 

WITH 
GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION 

MCMXXI 



PREFACE 

The author has attempted an outline of the history of 
Europe in the last fifty years, an era which began with the 
victories of the Germans in 1870 and ended with the 
destruction of their empire. 

No period can be more interesting to the present student 
of events. The history of Europe during this half century 
was, indeed, the larger part of the history of all of the 
world, for most of the world's population was controlled 
by European powers or else associated with them and 
directly affected by their fate. The events of this time 
have touched the lives and the fortunes of most men and 
women now living. Successive years were thronged with 
vast developments and crowded with a multitude of per- 
sons and events, the story moving like some drama on to 
its tragic end. 

Whether we wish it or not, the present and the future 
must be filled with great problems arising from this era, 
to be understood only in connection with it. Into con- 
sideration of these problems we here in the United States 
are destined to be ever more nearly drawn. 

Much of the writing was done in connection with the 
author's Europe, 1789-1920; but considerable additions 
have been made and some portions are entirely new. 
If, in spite of the larger space available here, he can be 
reproached with having left out a great many things, the 
answer must be that he has tried very hard to do this. In 
his own studies and reading he has never had any lasting 
impression from a mere collection of details. He has. 



viii PREFACE 

therefore, striven to eliminate non-essential things wher- 
ever he could, and elsewhere subordinate the less im- 
portant matters to consideration of principal tendencies 
and dominant ideas. It is his highest ambition that in his 
pages may be had a glimpse of the reality of departed years 
and something of the spirit that was in them. In respect 
of this he hopes that some of the quotations at the chapter 
heads may seem of more worth than ten times their space 
filled with data and statistics; and that here and there a 
student reading them may feel the mysterious call to seek 
out the great books himself. 

The author is indebted to the courtesy of Messrs. G. P. 
Putnam's Sons for permission to quote at the beginning 
of the seventeenth chapter lines written by the late 
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. 

Edward Raymond Turner. 
Ann Arbor, Michigan 
May 1, 1921 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 
I. 
II. 
III. 

IV. 

V. 
VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 



PAGE 

The Era of 1870 7 

The French Revolution and After . 17 
New Inventions and the Industrial 

Revolution 40 

Certain Intellectual and Social 

Changes 67 

The European States in 1870 ... 94 
The Military Triumphs of Germany, 

1864-1871 122 

The Growth of the New German Em- 
pire 143 

The Leadership of Germany — The 

Triple Alliance 173 

The Recovery of France — The Dual 

Alliance 210 

Democratic Britain 240 

Russia 269 

Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and the 

Balkans 304 

Italy, Spain, and the Lesser States 344 

Colonies and Imperial Expansion . . 369 

Triple Alliance and the Ententes . 398 

The Causes of the Great War . . . 421 

The Great War 450 

The Settlement of 1920 498 

Socialism, Syndicalism, and the 

Russian Revolution 529 

Appendix 551 

Index 557 

ix 



MAPS 

NO. PAGE 

1. Relief Map of Europe . . . Following 20 

2. Racial Map of Europe .... " . 36 

3. The Coal, Iron, and Oil Resources of 

Europe Following 52 

4. Europe: Showing Railroads, Canals, and 

Principal Rivers Following 68 

5. Europe in 1870 {In colors) . . " 100 

6. Alsace-Lorraine 140 

7. The German Empire in 1914 , . Following 164 

8. The Treaty of San Stefano 177 

9. France in 1920 216 

10. The British Isles 244 

11. Ireland: Showing the Sinn Fein Areas in 

1918, AND THE Unionist Areas in Ulster. 262 

12. Map to Illustrate the History of Poland 275 

13. Racl\l Map of Russia 277 

14. The Russian Empire in 1914 . . Following 292 

15. The Russo-Japanese War 295 

16. Racial Map of Austria-Hungary . . . 309 

17. The Balkans in 1878 322 

18. The Ottoman Dominions: Greatest Ex- 

tent, Successive Losses, Present Ex- 
tent Following 324 

19. The Balkans in 1913 330 

20. Asia in 1800 Following 356 

21. Africa in 1800 " 372 

22. Asia in 1914 " 388 

23. Africa in 1914 " 404 

xi 



xii MAPS 

NO. PAGE 

24. The British Empire in 1914 . . Following 420 

25. Supposed Pan-German Plan . . " 436 

26. The Western Front in the Great War . 465 

27. The Eastern Front in the Great War. . 466 

28. The Oceans of the World — Mercator's 

Projection: Showing the Principal Sea 
Lines of Communication in the Great 

War Following 468 

29. Gallipoli 471 

30. The Austro-Italian Frontier 483 

31. Africa in 1920 Following 500 

32. Czecho-Slovakia 507 

33. The Balkans in 1920 509 

34. Jugo-Slavia 510 

35. The British Empire in 1920 . . Following 516 

36. Europe in 1920 {In colors) ... " 532 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



INTRODUCTORY 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

For additional general reading, especially for the period before 1870: 
C. M. Andrews, The Historical Development of Modern Europe from the 
Congress of Vienna to the Present Time, 2 vols. (1898); Oscar Brown- 
ing, History of the Modern World, 1815-1910, 2 vols. (1912); Antonin 
Debidour, Histoire Diplomatique de V Europe, 181^-1878, 2 vols. (1891); 
E. Drianlt and G. Monod, Evolution du Monde Moderne: Histoire Poli- 
tique et Sociale, 1815-1909 (1910); C. A. Fyffe, A Historij of Modern 
Europe, 1792-1878 (1896); C. J. H. Hayes, A Political and Social His- 
tory of Modern Europe, 1500-1915, 2 vols. (1916-17); C. D. Hazen, 
Europe Since 1815 (1910); W. A. Phillips, Modem Europe, 1815-1899 
(2d ed., 1902); J. S. Schapiro, Modern and Contemporary European His- 
tory (1918); C. Seignobos, A Political History of Europe Since 1814 
(trans, by S. M. Macvane, 1900); also, J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard, 
Readings in Modern European History (1909). 

Of longer works Alfred Stern, Geschichte Europas seit den Vertrdgen 
von 1815 bis zum Frankfurter Frieden von 1871, exhaustive and based 
largely on sources, is the best; volumes I- VII (1894—1916), covering 
the years down to 1852, have appeared. 

For the period after 1870: F. M. Anderson and A. S. Hershey, 
Handbook for the Diplomatic History of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1870— 
1914 (1918), a cooperative work which contains excellent summaries 
and up-to-date bibliographical lists; C. M. Andrews, Contemporary 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1871-1901 (1902); A. Debidour, Histoire 
Diplomatique de r Europe depuis le Congres de Berlin jusqu'd Nos Jours, 
2 vols. (1916), the best account of recent French diplomatic history; 
W. M. FuUerton, Problems of Power: a Study of International Politics 
from Sadowa to Kirk-Kilisse (1913); H, A. Gibbons, The New Map of 
Europe (1914) ; L. H. Holt and A. W. Chilton, The History of Europe 
from. 1862 to 19U (1917); J. H. Rose, The Development of the European 
Nations, 1870-1914, 2 vols, in one (5th ed., 1916); Charles Seymour, 
The Diplomatic Background of the War, 1870-1914 (1916). 

More comprehensive are the great cooperative histories: The 
Cambridge Modern History, ed. by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, S. 
Leathes, 14 vols. (1902-12), of which the volumes are bulky and the 
contents seldom inspiring, but which are always instructive, and in 
which the student who cares to turn to them will find a vast amount of 
additional information about most of the important topics treated in this 
volume; Histoire Generale du IV' Siecle a Nos Jours, ed. by E. Lavisse 



4 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

and A. Rambaud, 12 vols. (1894-1901), less up-to-date but more attrac- 
tive; Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. by W. Oncken, 
50 vols. (1879-93). For information about historical writing, Eduard 
Fueter, Geschichte der Neueren Historiographie (1911); G. P. Gooch, 
History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913). 

For the treaties: P. Albin, Les Grands Traitis Politiques: Reciieil 
des Principaux Textes Diplomatiques depuis 1815 jzisqu'd Nos Jours 
(ed. 1911); Sir Edward Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, 18 U- 
1891, 4 vols. (1875-91); Baron Descamps and L. Renault, Recueil 
des TraitSs du XIX' Siecle (1914-). 

Notwithstanding that a great part of the most important diplomatic 
papers remain unpublished and inaccessible in the various archives of 
Europe, yet a large number have been published, and may be used 
in such storehouses of information as Archives Diplomatiques, 129 
vols. (1863-1914), covering the period 1862 to 1913; and British 
and Foreign State Papers, 108 vols. (1841-1918), covering the years 
1812 to 1914. 

For information about governments: W. F. Dodd, Modern Constitu- 
tions, 2 vols. (1909); F. A. Ogg, The Governments of Europe (1913); 
Percy Ashley, Local and Central Government: a Comparative Study of 
England, France, Prussia, and the United States (1906); Handbuch des 
Offentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart in Monographien (ed. by Heinrich 
Marquardsen and others, 1883-); W. B. Munro, The Government 
of European Cities (1909). 

For the miscellaneous things, about which ready information is 
often got with much difficulty, the best source is the Encyclop(Bdia 
Britannica, 11th ed., 29 vols. (1910-11), in which not a few of the 
articles are contributions by the best authorities. 

For additional biographical information: the Dictionary of National 
Biography, 72 vols. (1885-1913); Nouvelle Biographic GenSrale, 46 vols. 
(1855-66); Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 54 vols. (1875-). 

If possible, students should sometimes consult the principal historical 
reviews, where they will not only find much rare and interesting infor- 
mation but be brought into contact with the best modern scholarship 
and research: The American Historical Review; The English Historical 
Review; Historische Zeitschrift; La Revue Historique; La Revue des 
Questions Historiques; and, for the more elementary student. The History 
Teacher's Magazine, now The Historical Outlook. 

No text book ever contained too many maps, and the student will 
find it well to use an atlas as much as possible: E. W. Dow, Atlas of 
European History (1907); Ramsay Muir, Hammond's New Historical 
Atlas for Students (2d ed. 1915); Vf.R.Shepherd, Historical AUas {1911); 
Cambridge Modern History, vol XIV; and H. B. George, The Relations 
of Geography and History (1910). 

For military affairs : General A. von Horsetzky , A Short History of the 
Chief Campaigns in Europe Since 1792 (trans, by Lieut. K. B. Ferguson, 
1909). 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 5 

International law : L. F. W. Oppenheim, International Law, 2 vols. 
(1905-6); H. J. F. X. Bonfils, Manuel du Droit International Public 
(Droit des Gens), 7th ed. (1914). 

For current information the following annual publications: The 
Annual Register (1758-); L' Annie Politiq^ie (1874-1905), continued as 
La Vie Politique dans les Deux Mondes (1906-) ; Europdischer Geschichts- 
kalender (1861-); The Statesman'' s Year Book (1864-); The New In- 
ternational Year Book (1907-). 

The student with a taste for recent history will find a fascinating 
field for exploration in the volumes of the more important periodicals, 
such as The (London) Nation, The National Review, The Quarterly 
Review, The (New York) Weekly Review, Revue des Deux Mondes, and 
many others. He will also find much instruction and amusement in 
the cartoons of such publications as Jugend and Punch. 



CHAPTER I 
THE ERA OF 1870 AND EUROPE 



Europe is the smallest in extent of the four great continents, and yet 
we may pronounce it the most important of all the divisions of the 
globe. Asia, indeed, was the cradle of civilization and knowledge; 
but her empires soon became, and have ever since continued, 
stationarj"-; while Europe has carried the sciences, arts, and re- 
finements, with almost iminterrupted progress, to the compara- 
tively elevated state at which they have now arrived. All the 
branches of industry are conducted with a skill and to an extent 
unattained in any other part of the earth. 
Hugh Murray, and others, The Encyclopoedia of Geography 
(1855), i. 288, 289. 

The beginning of this period of European history, far 
away as it seems now, is not remote through number of 
years. Some can still remember 1870, and many fathers and 
mothers of the generation now living were of , the genera- 
tion then in its prime. But passing years have brought 
about mighty changes. The men of that time, so be- 
whiskered, as they peer from out of the engravings, with 
tall hats, loose trousers, long coats; the women, with wide 
skirts, crinoline, and shawls; the artisans, the laborers, 
the women workers, the peasants, seen in the prints or 
cruder pictures of then ; all of these people of the era of our 
fathers or grandfathers lived amidst changes which have 
since made their life and surroundings appear strange and 
old-fashioned to us. 

Yet, compared with what had been a century previous, 
before 1789, in the Old Regime, these men and women 
lived in the midst of conditions much like our own. A 
hundred years before, in the eighteenth century, almost all 
the people in Europe had made their living by working the 

7 



Two genera- 
tions ago 



The Old 
R6gime very 
different 
from the 
period about 
1870 



8 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Lowly con- 
dition of the 
people in the 
eighteenth 
century 



Religion 



land. A much smaller number sought their livelihood in 
manufacturing, commerce, and trade. They worked long 
hours with simple tools, and with much labor of muscle 
and hands. Few of them could read and write. Most 
of them made up a lower class, without political power 
or rights, ruled by a small upper class and sovereigns, 
whom they obeyed and supported. The great mass of men 
and women were serfs, partly unf ree. Between the throng 
of laborers, peasants, and serfs on the one hand, and the 
great men of the nobility or the Church on the other, was 
a middle class, the bourgeoisie, rising in importance, but 
in most countries still with small part in controlling affairs. 
Generally government was in the hands of sovereigns, 
who had power complete and despotic, ruling of them- 
selves and through officials whom they appointed or re- 
moved at their pleasure. In no great country then did an 
important representative assembly exist, save in Great 
Britain; and the British parliament, though it was repre- 
sentative and endowed with real power, represented only 
the upper classes and very often worked in their interests. 
Nowhere, except among the followers of such men as 
Rousseau, was there any idea that all men, not to speak 
of women, should vote and be represented in parliaments, 
which should make the laws and grant taxes. There was 
much unbelief and religious decadence, but this had been 
confined mostly to the upper intellectual class. The 
great body of the people everywhere followed the teaching 
of their priests without question. Enlightened sceptics 
might deride the dogmas of the Church, but the masses, 
simple and pious, accepted the Scriptures, with the story 
of creation and the fall of man, with the derivative con- 
ceptions of heaven, earth, purgatory, and hell, literally, 
with no reservation. In most of the countries of Europe 
national feeling was dormant or weak. 

At this time most people travelled seldom and little. 
By land they must go on foot, on horseback, or in cumber- 



THE ERA OF 1870 AND EUROPE 9 



some coaches, over poor roads, ill made and ill kept. On 
the rivers they might go down with the current toward 
the coast. On the sea they would voyage slowly in small 
sailing ships driven forward by the wind. Not many 
letters could be sent; they went slow and might not be 
delivered. Newspapers were few and small and contained 
little news. There was no way of getting news from other 
places quickly. Most houses were not well heated, and 
there was no way for most people to get enough inex- 
pensive fuel. Artificial lighting was scanty and poor; 
and after sundown there was such darkness as is not 
known to most people now. There was not much ma- 
chinery. Manufacturing was mostly carried on in the 
laborers' homes. The work was done largely by hand, 
with simple tools and devices. The steam engine was 
only just beginning to be used. There were not yet any 
railroads, no steamboats, no telegraphs, no telephones, 
and no electrical apparatus. Only a little had the forces 
of nature been reduced to the service of man. 

By 1870 an immense transformation had come. Divine 
right of kings and their absolute power had been over- 
thrown in western Europe In many countries constitu- 
tions had appeared, and governments had come to be 
limited and responsible to representatives elected. Most 
people still did not accept any idea of complete democracy 
or universal suffrage, and would have laughed to scorn the 
suggestion that women should have any control over the 
governments which ruled them. None the less the con- 
dition of women was slowly but constantly improving, and 
in one country after another the electorate was being 
widened and democracy enhanced and extended. By 
this time nationalism had come to be one of the strongest 
political forces in the world. In western Europe the power 
of nobles and great churchmen had been broken, and an 
aristocracy of blood no longer lorded over the mass of the 
people. The place of the old nobility now was largely 



Material 
conditions 
in the time 
of the Old 
Regime 



Conditions 
about 1870 



10 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Industry 
and capi- 
talism 



Material 
conditions in 
1870 



held by an industrial aristocracy, the great manufacturers, 
capitalists, and traders, much increased in numbers, in 
wealth, and in power. They were masters of men em- 
ployed in factories and working at the machines of em- 
ployers for wages. More and more they dominated the 
conduct of affairs. But the workers, so helpless and 
oppressed in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, 
were slowly gathering power to win better conditions. 
Already they were beginning to form industrial trade 
unions, while the socialist doctrines of St. Simon and Marx 
proclaimed new hopes for the masses of mankind. At 
the same time, immense and brilliant scientific investiga- 
tion was establishing new ideas which conflicted with the 
older teachings of the Church. Men were beginning to 
beheve that the world was very old, and that things al- 
ways had developed by slow change or evolution. 

During the period just preceding, the advance in dis- 
covery and mechanical invention had been far greater 
than in any epoch before. In 1870, it is true, in Europe 
as elsewhere, there were no airplanes, no submarines, no 
automobiles, no combustion gas engines, and no tram cars 
in the cities. The phonograph, the cinema, and wireless 
telegraphy had not yet appeared. But some of the great- 
est things which we have now men were possessed of then. 
The immense liners and huge freight ships which cross 
every ocean in our day had not yet appeared, but steam- 
ships had revolutionized sea-borne traffic. The passage 
over the Atlantic, which had formerly taken a month or 
six or seven weeks, now sometimes took less than a fort- 
night. Maritime facilities were being extended, and 
vast changes and improvements made. The Isthmus of 
Panama was still the narrow but insuperable obstacle be- 
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific that it was in the days 
when Balboa toiled slowly from one shore to the other. 
But a still greater obstacle to the world's trade had just, 
been removed. In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened amidst 



THE ERA OF 1870 AND EUROPE 11 



magnificent festivities, memorable for the first perform- 
ance of Verdi's A'ida. The splendid railroad systems of 
Europe, which before the Great War linked all its im- 
portant cities together, and formed a network of high- 
ways in the more advanced countries of the west, were far 
less developed fifty years before; but railways had long 
been increasingly important. Already the Prussians were 
arranging their railways for war, in "strategic systems." 

Partly in consequence of better transportation, partly 
because of certain great mechanical inventions, an in- 
dustrial system had been rising, which made it easy 
to produce more necessaries and luxuries than had ever 
been possible before in the history of mankind. The 
telegraph was everywhere bringing rapid communication 
on land, while telegraphs carried in submarine cables were 
being laid beneath various seas. In 1866 such a cable had 
been stretched across the bottom of the Atlantic. It was 
now possible for news to be got quickly from a distance, 
and with the development of the power printing-press, 
large newspapers containing much fresh news were cir- 
culated widely without delay. Illiteracy was still preva- 
lent in eastern and southern Europe, and much of it 
remained in all countries except Prussia and a few smaller 
states. Yet, it had much diminished since the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, and there were constantly more 
readers of newspapers, periodicals, and books. 

The lands of these people, the mountains, the rivers, 
the seas round about — all were very much as they had been 
for a hundred past generations. In mass and in area 
Europe seemed small enough, for it was least among the 
continents, less than either of the Americas, only an 
extension of Asia, to the east, and small beside the giant 
Africa southward. From Asia Europe was marked off 
on the east by the low-lying Ural Mountains; southward 
by the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and by the Cau- 
casus Mountains between them. At two points, the 



Machinery 
and com- 
munication 



The Con- 
tinent of 
Europe 



12 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

Bosporus and the Dardanelles, where Constantinople 
stood and where ancient Troy once had been, Asia and 
Europe were separated by less than the breadth of a river. 
Between Europe and Africa lay the Mediterranean, high- 
way of commerce and once the very cradle of European 
culture. Past the sunlit shores of Greece and Italy 
and France, this sea stretched on resplendent and broad, 
until narrowing down by the Spanish coast it ended at the 
Strait of Gibraltar. 
The Euro- Of this Europe the greater part was a vast and exten- 

pean plain sive low plain, which embraced all the eastern half of the 
continent. From the sunken stretches by the Caspian 
and the great wheat lands above the Black Sea, up across 
the steppes, the forests, the marshes of Russia, to the 
barren tundras of the north, and eastward from the Urals 
to the Carpathian Mountains, stretched the mighty ex- 
panses of this plain, which was here the home of the 
Russian people and mother of the races of the Slavs. 
Huge, monotonous, unbroken, it was traversed by broad, 
slowly moving rivers, Ural, Volga, Dnieper, and Don, 
flowing to the south, and by others less known and less 
used flowing northward. Stretching west, to the north 
of the Carpathians and lesser mountains, a narrower part 
of this plain extended, across the Prussian and northern 
German lands, over Belgium and Holland, across the north- 
ern part of France and the western part, down to the 
Pyrenees Mountains. And farther north and westward, 
beyond the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, beyond lands 
long since sunken and drowned, portions of this plain 
ended in Sweden and England. Across parts of this 
western extension ran the most renowned rivers of Europe, 
Vistula, Oder, Elbe, Weser, Rhine, Seine, Loire, Garonne, 
and Thames. In this great plain, from the Russian 
mountains to the Bay of Biscay and Ireland, lived most 
of Europe's inhabitants, and there now were assembled 
most of her wealth and grandeur and power. 



THE ERA OF 1870 AND EUROPE 13 



Elsewhere mountain and upland held sway over low- 
land and plain. Most of Norway, most of Switzerland, 
all the north half of Scotland, most of Wales, and much 
of the Balkan country, were mountainous, and parts of 
them backward, sparsely peopled, and poor. Between 
Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen the heights of the 
Alps rose like a towering rampart, distinctly separating 
nations. All the eastern coast of the Adriatic and all the 
west side of Norway were a succession of deep fiords and 
landlocked bays between lofty and precipitous mountains. 
In 1870 the inhabitants of Albania were in the midst of 
the savage, tribal conditions in which Lord Byron had 
known them sixty years earlier, like the Scottish High- 
landers two centuries before. Spain, with plateau lands 
traversed by parallel ranges, was definitely marked off 
from France by the Pyrenees Mountains. In central 
Europe the Carpathians lay like a bulwark reared against 
Russia. 

The principal arteries of communication and commerce 
continued to be the rivers and the seas. The more im- 
portant rivers of north Russia and those of eastern Ger- 
many drained to the Baltic, whence the commerce of 
these regions went outward in between the Scandinavian 
countries to the North Sea and the oceans of the world. 
The rivers of west Germany, the Low Countries, and north 
France, flowed to the North Sea and the English Channel, 
whence their commerce was carried to the Atlantic. Be- 
yond the Continent lay England, just where she com- 
manded all of this commerce. Her favorable position had 
brought her great wealth and power. To London, on 
the estuary of the Thames, came the shipping of the world, 
while Liverpool, on the western side of England, throve on 
the growing American trade. Eastern Russia drained 
down to the land-locked Caspian through the mighty 
length of the Volga. All central and southern Russia 
looked toward the Black Sea, while Austria, Hungary, and 



Mountain 
and upland 



Rivers and 
seas 



14 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The land 
routes 



Memorials, 

traditions, 

associations 



the Balkan countries were nourished by the Danube 
which sought this sea also. The commerce of the Black 
Sea went in a steady stream past Constantinople and 
Gallipoli to the Mediterranean, where it was mostly borne 
westward past southern Europe out by Gibraltar to the 
Atlantic Ocean, On the Mediterranean, brought thither 
by road or river, went the commerce of Greece, of Italy, 
of southern France, and of most of Spain, 

The great land routes sought the valleys and the plains, 
or, if necessary, climbed uplands and the mountain 
passes. Through the Pyrenees went the overland routes 
between France and Spain, Through the several Alpine 
passes armies and merchants had gone from the time of 
Hannibal to the time of Napoleon, and under the Alps long 
tunnels for railways were soon to be built. Between the 
French and the German peoples, between Paris and 
Berlin, the old roads, the modern trunk hue, the principal 
highway, traversed the plain across Belgium and Holland, 
and across these small countries, especially Belgium, from 
one to the other of the mightier neighbors, merchants and 
their wares had gone for ages, and armies had often met 
there in mortal combat. 

This Europe was a land very rich in its past, enshrined 
in old deeds and traditions. Some ancient crosses and 
round towers still existed in Ireland, Up and down Eng- 
land, from Canterbury to Durham, were the cathedrals, 
with their majesty, beauty, and repose. In Portugal 
were the vast, deserted palaces built in former times. 
In Spain the Escurial watched over its gray, wide 
plain, while the sublime quietude of the cathedral at 
Toledo witnessed the devotion of days elsewhere gone. 
All through the southern parts of France were relics of 
Greeks, of Romans, of medieval culture, from the aque- 
duct near Nimes and the amphitheatre at Aries to the 
fortress towers and the keep of Carcassonne. Northward 
were the cathedrals, at Bourges, at Chartres, at Amiens, 



THE ERA OP 1870 AND EUROPE 15 



at Rheims, and Noire-Dame de Paris; and farther on the 
abbeys and churches of the Normans. In Belgium the 
Cloth Hall at Ypres, the towers and old bridges of Bruges. 
, At Cologne the cathedral spires threw their shadows down 
by the Rhine. All across western Germany, along the 
Baltic, down through Austria and its provinces, were 
memorials of an older German culture, at Augsburg, at 
Nurnberg, at Innsbruck, at Salzburg, at Rothenburg, and 
Aachen. In Italy were the palaces and churches of Milan 
and Florence, the canals and the marbles of Venice, the 
tombs of Ravenna, the tower of Pisa, the Coliseum at 
Rome and St. Peter's, and near Naples the older ruins of 
Pompeii were even then being uncovered. By the Danube 
at Vienna stood the houses of the proudest aristocracy in 
Europe. At Constantinople bulked, as if for ever, the 
dome of Santa Sophia; before it rose in slender height the 
newer minarets of the Turk. Across the stretches of the 
Russian plain were Moscow and Novgorod, in their as- 
pect half oriental; and farther still, at Samara on the 
Volga, the market place, with riot of colors and babel 
of voices, its throngs come from Europe and Asia. 

The mountains of southern Spain had looked down when 
the Moors gained their victories and afterward made 
their last stand. The Pillars of Hercules had watched 
the Phoenician galleys go by. The fogs and the rain blew 
in Ireland as in the time of Saint Patrick. The Channel 
and the Rhine had long before been observed and described 
by Caesar. Older by far than the Catacombs of Rome 
or the ruined temple at Psestum, Vesuvius poured forth 
its smoke, while Stromboli glared in the night as when 
Carthaginians came sailing north. The Alpine passes 
had seen the ages go by, with the barbarians, the con- 
querors, the merchants, the pilgrims, who had toiled to 
their heights, then gone downward. More ancient than 
Homer or Sappho was the beauty of the isles of the Greeks. 
A few years before the Carpathians had been pierced 



Cities of 
an older 
time 



The past 
and the 
present 



16 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Europe an 
ancient 
home of 
peoples 



by Russian armies, as long since they had been traversed 
by Hungarians and Huns. The endless reaches of Russia 
stretched on in remoteness and sadness. The Rhine 
flowed down, past medieval castles and new industrial 
cities, by ancient vineyards, by the memories of Roman 
bridges. The stars of the night, which had glittered for 
Galileo and Dante, watched now the nineteenth century 
slowly draw toward its close. Beside these things the state- 
craft of rulers, wars, treaties, arrangements, the toil and the 
lives of people, man's doings and man's aspirations, here 
as elsewhere seemed fleeting, small, unimportant. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

For a general, brief summary of European life and conditions : 
E. R. Turner, Europe, 1789-1920 (1920). 

The accounts of travellers often contain vivid description 
and a great deal of interesting information: Edmondo De 
Amicis, VOlanda (1874, trans. 1880), Ricordi di Londra (1874); 
W. C. Bryant, Letters of a Traveller (1850); Charles Dickens, 
Pictures from Italy (1844); R. W. Emerson, English Traits 
(1856); Theophile Gautier, Voyage en Espagne (1843, trans. 
1853), Italia (1852), Voyage en Russie (1866); A. J. C. Hare, 
Walks in Rome (1871); Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home 
(1863), English Note Books (1870), French and Italian Note 
Books (1871); John Hay, Castilian Days (1871); Victor Hugo, 
Le Rhin (1842); H. W. Longfellow, Outre-Mer (1835); H. B. 
Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, 2 vols. (1854) ; Hippo- 
lyte Taine, Voyage aux Pyrenees (1855), Voyage en Italic (1866, 
trans. 1869), Notes sur VAngleterre (1872); Bayard Taylor, 
Views Afoot (1846) , Travels in Greece and Russia (1859) , Northern 
Travel (I860); W. M. Thackeray, The Paris Sketch Book (1868), 
The Irish Sketch Book (1869); C. D. Warner, In the Levant 
(1875); Edward Whymper, Scrambles among the Alps (1871); 
N. P. Willis, Pencillings by the Way (1835). 



CHAPTER II 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND 
AFTER 



The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only 
derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the 
people to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet re- 
mains fundamentally. . , . 
John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649). 

Les representants du peuple fran^ais constitues en assemblee nation- 
ale . . . declarent 
Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et egaux en droits. . . . 
Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des droits 
naturels ... la liberte, la propriete, la surete et la resistance a 
I'oppression 

Declaration of the Rights of Man, September 14, 1791, Archives 
Parlementaires, 1st series, xxxii. 525. 

Universal suffrage fera le tour du monde. It is now the last court of 
appeal on all questions, international, among the rest. 

Conversation of Montalembekt with Nassau Senior (1863). 

Down to 1870, perhaps it still seemed that the most 
important cause of changes inthe hundred years preceding 
had been the French Revolution, and that Europe in the 
nineteenth century had been adjusting herself to what 
had begun in the latter part of the eighteenth century in 
France. In the days of the Old Regime the great mass of 
men and women almost everywhere had been debased, 
ignorant, laborious peasants, toiling on the land to produce 
with a rude agriculture the subsistence for themselves 
and their masters. For the most part, as in Russia, the 
German countries, Hungary, and Poland, they were serfs, 
partly unfree, bound to the soil, under obligation to work 
for their lord several days in the week, and make to him 

17 



Europe be- 
fore the 
French 
Revolution 



18 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Condition 
of the 



Ideas about 
government 



payments in produce or kind. In some places, like Ire- 
land, where serfdom did not prevail, the peasants were 
bowed down in as lowly position through heavy rents 
which they paid to landlords. Nowhere, save in some of 
the Swiss Cantons, did the mass of the people control 
their governments or have any voice in the conduct of 
affairs. Almost everywhere they were excluded from all 
participation in government, substantially debarred from 
the holding of office, not allowed to vote for the members 
of legislative or conciliar assemblies, where such assemblies 
existed. Most of them were entirely subject to the rule 
of absolute sovereigns or powerful nobles. The mighty 
Roman Catholic Church had for ages insisted that within 
its ranks there should be opportunity for the humblest to 
rise, though actually the great places had almost always 
been monopolized by members of the upper classes. In 
the seventeenth century Calvinists, asserting that all men 
were equal in the sight of God, transferred this idea to the 
realm of politics, and declared that church members, at 
any rate, should have part in the government under which 
they lived, and some right to control their rulers. Gen- 
erally, however, there was no idea that most men and 
women should have any part in the governance of states, 
through representatives consenting to taxes or making the 
laws of the land. It was almost universally held that 
they should merely obey without question. Kings and 
nobles then tried to govern their realms to best advantage, 
and sometimes endeavored to better the condition of the 
people. None the less, for the most part government was 
managed in the interests of the sovereigns and the upper 
classes, taxes were imposed without respect to the wish of 
the payers, and statecraft and foreign policy were carried 
on at the discretion of rulers. 

In Great Britain then conditions, though very different 
from what they are now, were nevertheless better than 
anywhere else in Europe. The power of the king had long 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



19 



been limited by a parliament composed partly of represent- 
atives of the upper and middle classes, and it was not 
possible to take from British subjects a shilling of taxes 
which their parliament had not freely granted. Serfdom 
had completely passed away. The great majority of the 
people had, indeed, no voice in the government, but they 
had the protection of the English common law and certain 
great statutes, like Habeas Corpus; and the great men of 
the upper classes, while ruling in their own interests, yet 
had much consideration for the people beneath them. 
The government of Britain in the latter part of the eigh- 
teenth century was regarded as a model by the great 
French political theorists and wTiters, who hoped that 
their own might be reconstructed some day so as to be 
more like it. 

In France conditions then were less good, but more 
favorable than in any other large state excepting Great 
Britain. The government was entirely in the hands of a 
king with unlimited power, assisted by officials whom he 
appointed. Whereas parliamentary institutions had de- 
veloped in England, so that in course of time the power 
of the king was limited and checked, in France they had 
declined, and the French representative assembly, the 
Etais Generaux, had not been summoned since 1614. 
Serfdom had mostly disappeared, but some old manorial 
obligations, payments to the seigneur and working upon 
his land, remained to vex a great number of peasants. 
Taxes were high, and were paid very largely by the im- 
poverished lower classes. Notwithstanding all this, most 
Frenchmen probably reahzed that for the past hundred 
years their government had been more successful than 
that of any other great state on the Continent, that the 
soil of France had almost never in that time been trodden 
by invaders, that France was great and respected, and 
that French culture, in its favorable surroundings, had 
developed more finely than any other then in existence. 



Conditions 
in Great 
Britain 



In France 



20 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Conditions 

relatively 

good 



y 



First stage 
of the K,. 
French 
Revolution, 
1789-1792 



V 



It was partly because conditions were relatively good, and 
because civilization and prosperity were high, that so 
much enlightened discontent was developed. Writers 
like Montesquieu and Voltaire proclaimed the superior 
excellence of English institutions; Voltaire and Diderot 
criticized traditional beliefs with remarkable clearness and 
merciless wit; Rousseau and his disciples spread abroad 
a strange new philosophy that men were equal, that they 
should control their government, that existing things 
should be overthrown so that men might return to a 
blessed "state of nature." These teachings were allowed 
by a society long established and now grown careless, 
so strongly established, as it seemed, that it need not fear 
for the future. But year by year, in the second half of 
the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie were rising in 
importance and less content with their status, national 
finances grew more hopelessly involved, and the condition 
of the lowest class seemed harder to bear. At last bank- 
ruptcy was at hand, and as a final recourse the king, Louis 
XVI, summoned the Eiats GSn^raux, the old assembly of 
estates. 

Few, perhaps, expected the mighty results which 
followed. Almost immediately, the Third Estate, rep- 
resentatives of the middle and lower classes, got control 
of the body. They proclaimed themselves a National 
Assembly, and proceeded to draw up a constitution for 
France. The ideas long spread about were now seen to 
have taken deep root, and there was abundant evidence 
that reform would at once be attempted. Presently, in 
1791, a constitution was proclaimed which made France a 
limited monarchy, hke Great Britain, with principal power 
in a legislative assembly; but going beyond what had yet 
been accomplished in England, the franchise was given to 
three fourths of the men of the state. Nowhere up to 
that time had so great an extension of the electorate been 
made. The National Assembly had abolished serfdom and 




1. RELIEF 




OF EUROPE 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



21 



manorial burdens, and then confiscated the vast posses- 
sions of the Church, a fifth of the land in the kingdom. 
Hunger and misery had already caused outbreaks of the 
poor and the desperate, who rose up against their lords, 
seized their property, and drove them away. 

In the course of the two years, 1789-91, the French 
reformers seemed to have accomplished all that had been 
brought to pass in Britain during ages, and more. But 
the momentum of so rapid a change is seldom to be 
stayed until it has gone much farther in more rapid and 
violent course. Radicals now demanded more funda- 
mental and thorough-going reforms, declaring that what 
had been done so far benefited the lower classes very 
little. Ideas of complete democracy were put forward, 
and other ideas like the socialism preached fifty years 
later. Amid discontent from existing abuses and the 
confusion attending reforms it was not difficult for 
resolute radicals to seize control of affairs, especially 
when reactionaries and foreign powers tried to restore 
what had just been abolished. Accordingly, in 1792, the 
Revolution entered upon a new and more radical phase, 
when the new constitutional government was overthrown, 
a republic proclaimed, and a National Convention, chosen 
by manhood suffrage, assembled to draw up another 
constitution. Next year the king was put to death, and 
the nobles banished for ever. Sweeping changes were made 
or begun in the interests of the mass of the people. The 
property of the nobles was confiscated by the state and 
sold; and presently bought by small proprietors, so that 
afterward France came to be more largely divided among 
small owners than any other great state in the world. 
Simplification and codifying of the law were begun, and a 
better educational system was planned, work completed 
afterward under Napoleon Bonaparte. But this excellent 
work was wrought in the midst of a period of excessively 
radical change. Some of the reformers tried to sweep away 



The second 
stage, 1792-S 



The Con- 
vention 



22 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Reign 
of Terror 
and the en- 
suing reac- 
tion 



The middle 
class 
assumes 
control 



all old things. They called 1792 the Year I. Some wished 
to divide all property among all of the people. Christianity 
was suppressed and the worship of Reason proclaimed. 

There was, consequently, inevitable reaction. Many 
Frenchmen loved the old order. They had not sought 
its overthrow, and longed to restore it. A great many 
earnestly wanted the reforms made by the National As- 
sembly, but not the extremer changes offered now by the 
Convention. Moreover, the measures against church 
property, and especially against the Church, profoundly 
alienated great bodies of men and women whose strongest 
attachment was to their Church. And finally, while 
the great mass of the people had formerly been peasants, 
poor and discontented, now that manorial obligations had 
been abolished, their condition was bettered. As they 
began to purchase the confiscated lands and become 
property-owners themselves, they became conservative 
and no longer willing to follow radical leaders. Ac- 
cordingly, while in 1792-3 a great outburst of patriotism 
and rising of the people enabled the Convention to repel 
foreign enemies who tried to enter France, soon the leaders 
in the Convention, like Marat, Dan ton, and Robespierre, 
could maintain their power only through a reign of Terror, 
as did the Bolsheviki in Russia more than a century later. 
By massacre, by judicial murder, by ruthless force, they 
suppressed all uprisings and got space to continue their 
work. But the tide now flowed steadily back away from 
them, and presently the Convention came again under 
the power of the bourgeoisie. In 1795 the so-called Con- 
stitution of the Year III established the Directory, and 
made the government a middle-class republic, in which the 
franchise was limited by property qualifications. When 
this government had lost esteem from inej05ciency and from 
corruption it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte, a 
soldier of fortune but also a statesman and genius of un- 
rivalled abilities and daring. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



23 



Bonaparte, in effect, saved from further reaction and, 
perhaps, from overthrow, such of the work of the Revolu- 
tion as had sohd basis in the wishes of most of the people. 
As first consul, under the Constitution of the Year VIII 
(1800), and afterward as emperor (1802-1814), he 
seized upon all real power in the state, and was actually 
more powerful than Louis XVI ever had been. But 
the work of the National Assembly, 1789-91, was pre- 
served, and some of the work of the Convention brought 
to completion. Thus under Napoleon, as under the 
Constitution of 1791, serfdom and manorial obligations 
remained abolished; and the land taken from the mon- 
asteries and the Church, and now getting more and more 
into the possession of peasant proprietors, laid the founda- 
tions of a new, stronger France. Under his direction the 
old confused laws were reduced to the simple Code Na- 
poleon, which embodied, moreover, some of the best ideas 
of the Revolution. A great reform of education was 
carried forward. On the other hand, the excesses of the 
Jacobins and the Terror were rejected; and peace was 
made with the Church in the compromise embodied in the 
Concordat of 1801. Accordingly, the all-important, but 
comparatively moderate, reforms of the first part of the 
Revolution were preserved. 

From France the reforms of the Revolution were spread 
out over western, southern, and central Europe during 
a long series of wars, which began during the Revolution, 
continued under Napoleon, and were finally ended with 
the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In 1792 the Revolution- 
ists had seen themselves threatened not only by con- 
servatives and reactionaries in France, but by opposition 
from all the old divine right monarchies of Europe. 
Taking the offensive themselves they soon proclaimed that 
they would carry the blessings of their revolution to all 
the oppressed peoples of Europe. Then by propaganda 
and force of arms they sought to set up their system in 



The less 
radical part 
of the Revo- 
lution saved 
by Napoleon 
Bonaparte 



The Revolu- 
tionary ideas 
spread to 
other coun- 
tries 



24 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Radicals 
and con- 
servatives 
in Europe 



Reaction 
1814-1855 



all of the lands near by. They had much success, and soon 
occupied the districts adjoining their frontiers. Presently, 
indeed, Europe was divided between the innovators, sup- 
ported and urged forward by a militant French Republic, 
and all those who clung to the old order, whose instincts 
were conservative, who were appalled at the execution of 
the French king and his queen, and at the excesses of the 
Reign *of Terror. Napoleon was, indeed, ambitious and 
filled with consciousness of his ability as a soldier, but 
he was also confronted with an opposition in Europe, 
which was to a large extent opposition to the French 
Revolution. In the long wars of his time, which lasted 
with little intermission from 1797 to 1815, he crushed his 
enemies, and erected the mightiest despotism and military 
empire which Europe had seen for ages, but he also de- 
fended and preserved the better parts of the Revolution. 
When at last his enemies finally prevailed and his power 
was broken, through mere passage of time the best reforms 
of the Revolution had got firm root in France, and in the 
neighboring countries where Frenchmen had brought 
them. 

With the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 a period 
of reaction began in France, but the best reforms were not 
disturbed, and presently the work of 1789 was extended 
by the Revolution of 1830. After the downfall of Na- 
poleon very naturally reaction at once commenced in all 
the principal countries of Europe. After the long period 
of wars and confusion one of the principal objects of the 
great men who assembled at the Congress of Vienna (1814- 
15) was to restore what had been overthrown and make 
further revolution impossible. During the period of the 
domination of Metternich, the Austrian statesman 
(1814-48), and of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (1825-55), 
reaction held full sway over parts of the Continent. But 
even so, none of the great things which had been achieved 
in 1789 was destroyed. The Revolution of 1830 began 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



25 



a new, more liberal era in France and in Belgium; while 
the revolutions in various countries in 1848 not only 
carried forward the work in France but broke the power 
and the system of Metternich in central Europe. As yet 
the spirit of the French Revolution had scarcely crossed 
the borders of the realm of the tsars, but after the dis- 
asters of the Crimean War (1854-6), a new era began also 
in Russia. During all this time and afterward the ideas 
proclaimed in France in 1789 were being spread farther 
and farther, and more and more made good and accepted. 

In 1789 serfdom had been the condition of most of the 
people of Europe. In that year the remnants of it were 
abolished in France. During the Revolutionary and 
Napoleonic periods it was brought to an end by French 
conquerors in the German lands along the Rhine, in Italy, 
and in Spain. In 1807, when Prussia, striving to regene- 
rate herself and then escape from Napoleon's overlord- 
ship, was carrying through great reforms, serfdom was 
abolished in her dominions. It was now at an end in 
western and southern Europe, and in most of the German 
countries ; but it lingered on among the millions of subjects 
of Austria and Russia. Then, during the Revolution of 
1848 serfdom was abolished in Austria and in Hungary. 
Meanwhile, there had been some idea of freeing the serfs 
in Russia; but this was not attempted in earnest until the 
reign of Alexander II, who brought it to an end in the years 
from 1859-66. By this time slavery, a more complete 
form of servitude, had been abolished in the Southern 
States of the American Union, so that by 1870, except in 
Brazil, civil freedom was universal in every country 
ruled by white men in the world. 

Meanwhile, constitutional progress had gone on apace. 
In 1789 no important country had a constitution defining 
the powers of the government, except the new United 
States with their written constitution just established, and 
Great Britain with the custom, laws, and court decisions. 



Later 

revolutions, 
1830, 1848 



Disappear- 
ance of 
serfdom 



Constitu- 
tional prog- 
ress 



26 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Constitu- 
tional 

government 
in France 



In Spain 



which practically made an unwritten constitution. Almost 
everywhere, in states great or little, the power of the 
sovereign was not limited, save to some extent by general 
custom and obvious propriety. Generally that which 
pleased the prince was law. 

In 1791 the French National Assembly drew up the first 
constitution ever given to a great state on the continent 
of Europe, and this was followed by others, in 1795 and 
1800, all of them defining exactly the functions of the 
government and limiting its power. There was now in 
France above the rulers a great law which they must 
observe; and while in effect such a thing had long existed 
in England, there it was unwritten and defined only by the 
custom and constitutional development of the English 
people. When Louis XVIII was restored in 1814 he 
granted a Charter, or constitution, which, although it 
embodied the doctrine of Divine Right, limited the author- 
ity of the king and provided a definite scheme for the 
government of the realm. In 1830 this Charter was 
revised, and the doctrine of Divine Right omitted. After 
the Revolution of 1848 a constituent assembly drafted 
a new arrangement, and although Louis Napoleon 
seized large power for himself, yet even when he reigned 
as the Emperor Napoleon III he ruled the country under 
a constitution. 

Meanwhile, constitutionalism had gone forward in 
countries near by. The people of Great Britain continued, 
in accordance with their peculiar and admirable political 
genius, to preserve their constitution large and unwritten ; 
but as changes took place in other countries constitutions 
were written out explicitly after the manner of the French 
and the American peoples. In 1812 the Spanish revolu- 
tionists had proclaimed a liberal constitution, embodying 
the best ideas recently developed in France, and though 
this constitution was speedily overthrown, it was pro- 
claimed again in Spain during the revolution there in 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



27 



1820, and for some time served as a model for liberals 
in the southern lands. In 1830, when the Belgians de- 
clared their independence of Holland, they adopted a 
constitution, for some time the most liberal in Europe. 
The Revolution of 1848 brought constitutions in Austria 
and in Hungary, though in the following reaction they 
were speedily overthrown. In the next year, however, 
a new constitution was proclaimed for all of the Austrian 
dominions. Meanwhile, a general assembly, known as 
the Frankfort Parliament, had convened to draw up a 
scheme for uniting Germany. This assembly tried also 
to make a liberal constitution, but in the reaction soon 
under way in central Europe the rulers of the principal 
states found it easy to reject its work. In Prussia in 1848 
the people had risen in revolution, and a constituent 
assembly was called. The king was soon able to dismiss 
the members; but in 1850 a constitution was granted by 
the grace of the sovereign himself. Forty years before 
the Prussian king had promised to grant a "suitably 
organized representation both provincial and national," 
but this promise, twice repeated at intervals of five years, 
had remained unfulfilled. When at last, in 1867, Ger- 
man unity was substantially accomplished, the new North 
German Confederation was organized under a constitution, 
which was the basis of that of the German Empire estab- 
lished soon after. When the age-long troubles of the 
Austrians and Magyars were arranged in 1867, the settle- 
ment was embodied in the constitutional Compromise or 
Ausgleich. Farther east and south, in the dominions of 
Russia and of Turkey, there continued to be no semblance 
of government by any constitution. 

Meanwhile, the other great ideas of the French Revo- 
lution were spreading through Europe and changing the 
relations of men. Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite were the 
magnificent watchwords of Revolutionary leaders, and 
far as the deeds of these men and their successors often fell 



In central 
Europe 



Liberty and 
equality 



28 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Impulse of 
the French 
Revolution 



Democracy 
in earlier 
times 



short, yet it was the ideal of the best men to bring them 
to pass. Liberty and equality were more and more made 
good by the work of the Revolution and Napoleon, and as 
the result of a spirit increasingly enlightened and humane. 
Rousseau's idea, that man was born free, was embodied 
in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man 
(1791), that all men are free and equal in rights. As 
serfdom was abolished and civil equality made good in 
France, and as these reforms were gradually extended 
beyond the French borders, a great amelioration in the 
condition of the masses took place. By the end of the 
eighteenth century these things had been wrought in 
France; during the first half of the nineteenth they were 
accomplished in central Europe; during the second half 
they were being worked out in the eastern part. 

But while the idea of civil equality was spreading across 
Europe, political equality made much slower progress. 
Nowhere except among a few radical reformers was it 
believed that all of the people or most of them should have 
part in the government of the state. "I do not know," 
said Bishop Horsley in the British House of Lords, "what 
the mass of the people in any country have to do with the 
laws but to obey them." Democracy and political equal- 
ity had scarcely yet been conceived of. In ancient times 
there had been in the most highly developed communi- 
ties, especially in some of the city states of Greece, flour- 
ishing democracies, in which political power was actually 
in the hands of the demos or people. But this demos 
was only a part of the community, the free male citizens 
of the state, living beside other men who had no share in 
political privileges and supported by a far more numerous 
body of slaves. In the seventeenth century the Calvin- 
istic religious doctrines applied to politics presently devel- 
oped the idea of the political equality of the citizens in the 
government of their country, and for a while in England 
(1649-60) monarchy was abolished, a republic established, 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



29 



and political power given to the citizens of the state. 
But neither in England, where the experiment endured 
only for a brief space, nor in Calvinist Geneva and the 
Puritan communities across the Atlantic in New England, 
where the idea endured, was there any complete notion of 
democracy, for always the franchise was rigidly restricted 
to "God-fearing" men, the members of the Church in 
power. Furthermore, the Greek democratic assemblies 
of all the citizens, making their laws and deciding upon 
the administration of government, could never operate 
successfully for a large area. Hence self-government 
could not be developed by the people in a widely extended 
jurisdiction like the Roman Empire. 

During the Middle Ages, in Europe an immense forward 
step was taken in the gradual development of representa- 
tive government, in which a few went from a locality to 
stand for their many fellows who could not go. Usually 
the representatives were wanted merely to grant money 
to the king, but in course of time they gained greater 
power, and attended to other things also. This was the 
origin of the medieval estates of the realm. In England, 
where they had their farthest development, they grad- 
ually made the parliament of England. But generally 
the idea was not that people, or all people, should be rep- 
resented, and hence should choose the representatives 
who went to the assembly for them, but that the members 
should represent property or classes of people. As late as 
1793 a British judge gravely declared: "A government 
in every country should be just like a corporation; and in 
this country it is made up of the landed interest, which 
alone has a right to be represented; as for the rabble who 
have nothing but personal property, what hold has the 
nation upon them .5^" 

During the Age of Reason and while old ideas were 
breaking up in the second half of the eighteenth century, 
a new, bold conception came forth. Rousseau, developing 



Develop- 
ment of the 
system of 
representa- 
tion 



Representa- 
tion of peo- 
ple 



30 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Rousseau 



Representa- 
tion of all 
the people 



ideas once put forward by others who attracted little at- 
tention, now proclaimed that according to nature all men 
were equal, and that the wickedness of man and the 
misfortunes of time had made the inequalities existing. 
His ideas concerning this "state of nature," to which he 
urged all men to return, had no historical foundation, and 
probably no basis in fact, but through the wondrous 
eloquence and passion of his writing he got universal at- 
tention. The American Declaration of Independence in 
1776 specifically embodied this doctrine, and it was pres- 
ently asserted for a greater number of people in the 
French Constitution of 1791. But actually it was diffi- 
cult to realize. In the American communities there was 
no thought whatever of including negro slaves or even free 
negroes; and when the Constitution of the United States 
was adopted the regulation of the franchise was left to 
the several states, in which for a while only a small minor- 
ity of the people might vote. Great Britain had long 
had the most liberal government in Europe, but the 
franchise for electing members of the House of Commons 
had been fixed long before, and not one man out of ten had 
the suffrage. The new French constitution immensely 
extended the franchise — to three fourths of all the men; 
but this franchise was based upon property, being re- 
stricted to those who paid a certain amount of taxes. 

During the confusion of 1792 Rousseau's conception of 
equality was partly realized in politics, when a National 
Assembly was chosen by manhood suffrage. Among cer- 
tain English radicals also the doctrine was already growing. 
"Personality is the sole foundation of the right of being 
represented," said John Cartwright in his pamphlet 
Take Your Choice (1776), "property has, in reality, noth- 
ing to do in the case." And he and others advocated 
extension of the suffrage to all men. But actually such 
ideas were contrary to a vast amount of prejudice and 
olden custom, and in days when communication was poor, 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 31 



with no wide circulation of newspapers, no rapid dis- 
semination of news, and when most people could not read, 
they could probably not have succeeded. In Britain the 
agitation made no headway; in France reaction soon came. 
In the French Constitution of the Year III (1795) the 
franchise was again restricted by property qualifications, 
and while in the Constitution of the Year VIII (1800) 
manhood suffrage was for the first time really established, 
these voters were merely to choose others who would then 
choose five thousand "National Notables" from whom 
the executive would choose the members of the legislative 
assembly, so that the power of the ballot was not really 
entrusted to the people. 

Even after the Restoration and the Congress of Vienna 
there was gradual and continued political progress, and 
the franchise was slowly extended. In France the Charter 
restricted the franchise to men of thirty years or more with 
high property qualification, thus allowing the vote to 
100,000 voters out of a population of 29,000,000. In 
1831 an electoral law reduced the qualification and so 
increased the electorate to 200,000 out of 32,000,000. 
After the Revolution of 1848 a new constitution again 
established manhood suffrage. 

In the British Isles progress seemed slower, but more 
was really being achieved. Religious disabilities were 
first removed from Protestant Dissenters and from Roman 
Catholics, and then after a memorable agitation the 
franchise was extended in 1832. By no means was the 
principle of manhood or universal suffrage admitted. 
"The higher and middling orders are the natural repre- 
sentatives of the human race," Macaulay had said three 
years before; and the suffrage was still restricted to cer- 
tain classes, and limited by property qualifications. In- 
deed, the principal effect of a change which seemed revolu- 
tionary then was to transfer control from the upper class 
to the middle class, probably more conservative and more 



Extension of 
the fran- 
chise in 
France 



In the 
United 
Kingdom 



32 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



In the North 
German 
Confedera- 
tion 



In other 
countries 



tenacious of its rights. None the less, the electorate 
was increased from 500,000 to 1,000,000. A generation 
later, in 1867, after much unrest and repeated demands, 
a second electoral reform law was passed, and the fran- 
chise, still limited by particular qualifications, was extended 
so that 2,500,000 men could vote out of a population of 
about 30,000,000. This seemed but a grudging conces- 
sion in comparison with the manhood suffrage established 
in France since 1848, and the manhood suffrage granted 
by the constitution of the North German Confederation 
(1867); but in the France of the Second Empire, as in the 
Norddeutsches Bund of Bismarck, and in the German 
Empire afterward established, choosing of the members 
of the national legislature was of less importance because 
other constitutional provisions left to these legislatures 
little substantial power. In the United Kingdom, on 
the other hand, while only a portion of the men might 
vote for their representatives in the House of Commons, 
yet the Commons really controlled the government. 

In other countries where constitutional government 
was erected the franchise was usually restricted by prop- 
erty qualifications. By the constitution of 1831 only those 
Belgians might vote who paid a considerable tax; and the 
electorate was but slightly extended in 1848. In Holland, 
where, as in England, there had long before been relatively 
large constitutional progress, the electorate was small 
and was only slightly extended in 1848. In Spain uni- 
versal suffrage had been prematurely established in 1812, 
but the constitution was overthrown, reestablished by a 
revolution, then abrogated again. In 1848 Piedmont re- 
ceived from her king a constitution according to which 
the electorate was restricted to property-holders, and on 
the establishment of Italian unity (1861) this constitution 
with some changes was given to the Kingdom of Italy. 
During the Revolution of 1848 universal manhood suf- 
frage was proclaimed in Austria. In Hungary, the same 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



33 



year, by the March Laws the antiquated Diet, formerly 
controlled entirely by the nobility, was so reformed that its 
members were to be elected by citizens owning a certain 
amount of property. The reaction which soon followed 
swept all this away, and for a while after 1851 the Haps- 
burg dominions, like the Russian, were ruled entirely ac- 
cording to the will of the sovereign. In 1867, when the 
Ausgleich was agreed on, a narrow electorate was estab- 
lished in the two parts of the Dual Monarchy. Switzer- 
land in earlier times had been one of the principal strong- 
holds of constitutional, even democratic, government in 
the world. In 1848, when the Swiss Republic was estab- 
lished, a constitution was adopted by which the members 
of the National Council, the lower house of the national 
legislature, were to be elected by the votes of all adult 
males. In 1814 a constitution was established in Norway 
by which the representatives in the national legislature 
were elected by a large electorate limited by low property 
qualifications. In Sweden and also in Denmark the 
process was very much slower. 

It is interesting to note that while in the American colo- 
nies, as in England during the same period, the franchise 
had been restricted to a small number of the inhabitants 
by various quaUfications, and that this restriction con- 
tinued for some time after independence had been won, 
the limitations were removed in the early part of the 
nineteenth century, and by 1830, substantially, there was 
manhood suffrage for the free, white, adult males of the 
United States. 

Fraternity, perhaps the noblest idea of the Revolution, 
an old ideal of the Christian Church, proclaimed by the 
gentlest and wisest souls for a thousand years, was realized 
much less well. True, it was carried forward by the en- 
lightenment and humanitarianism increasingly character- 
istic of the nineteenth century, by the great body of the 
socialists, and by a noble company of men and women who 



In the 

Hapsburg 

dominions 



In the 

United 

States 



Fraternity 



34 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Develop- 
ment of na- 
tionalism 



"Nations" 



wished to bring war to an end, make humanity better, 
and do as they would be done by. But the conception of 
fraternity ran counter to the spirit of nationalism, which 
found new birth in Revolutionary times, and which, be- 
coming constantly stronger, marked men off in national 
divisions ever more sharply. 

Nationalism, which may be understood as the conscious- 
ness of a body of people that they are closely bound to- 
gether by certain ties, and that they are in some manner 
separate and distinct from others, is to a great extent a 
development of the period since 1789. Of old people 
were held together, for the most part, in small groups 
by family ties and blood relationship, and sometimes 
brought together in larger groups by interest, despotism, 
or force. Athenians were keenly conscious of their solidar- 
ity as citizens of Athens, and the Dorians of Sparta or the 
inhabitants of Corinth had similar feeling, but never were 
the Hellenes able to coalesce into one Greek nation. The 
inhabitants of the broad Roman Empire were so long 
united under good laws and admirable political organiza- 
tion that they could not but be conscious of some com- 
munity in one Roman state. During the Middle Ages, 
however, much of Europe was for a while broken up in 
small parts, under the "feudal system." Much of it long 
remained so divided; and it was impossible to make either 
a united Italy or a united Germany until long after the 
middle of the nineteenth century. "Nation " had not yet 
the meaning afterward given it. In ancient times it had 
denoted a group of people connected by blood-relation- 
ship (nati, born), and in medieval times it was used at 
the great universities to denote a body of students who 
had come from the same country. After a while strong 
nation states well organized were built up in England, 
in France, and presently in Spain. Within these states 
there gradually developed among many people strong 
feeling of nationality. But how incomplete the work 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



35 



often remained is evident in that all through the Middle 
Ages the north of England was loosely bound to the 
other portions, and that Catalonia has not yet been 
really united in national consciousness with the rest of 
Spain. The ideals cherished by many of the great leaders 
in the Middle Ages had been contrary to the development 
of nationalism, and had tended toward establishing a 
common citizenship in one great European Empire or one 
great Church; and it should be noted that even in the 
eighteenth century there was among the rulers and en- 
lightened classes, who were relatively more important 
then than now, considerable feeling of internationalism 
and consciousness of common European civilization. 

Nationalism entered upon a new, a splendid, and a 
terrible development in connection with the French 
Revolution. In 1793 a great European coalition was 
formed to overthrow the new system in France. The 
people already had a strong feeling of nationality, based 
on their language, their civilization, and traditions, and 
they had on memorable occasions before come forward to 
save the patrie when pressing danger threatened. Now to 
all the old feeling of oneness as a French nation were added 
an ardor and an enthusiasm sprung from belief that among 
them a glorious new era of the rights of man and his 
greater happiness had come. Accordingly, Frenchmen 
rushed forward to save the Revolution which seemed to 
have brought such great gifts. France was defended, and 
soon after French nationalism and Revolutionary ardor, 
guided by the supreme military ability of Napoleon, con- 
quered a large part of Europe. 

The success of Napoleon and the French came in no 
small part from the ardent spirit of French nationality 
opposed to peoples among whom this feeling was not yet 
so strong. But the conquests and oppressions of the 
French awakened stronger nationalism in other countries 
also. This spirit flaming forth in 1808 made Spaniards 



Slow 
progress 



Nationalism 
in France 



In other 
countries 



36 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Nationalism 
during the 
nineteenth 
centiiry 



Revival and 

larger 

growth 



willing to give up all that Spain might be free again. Such 
feeling was roused among the Slavs when Napoleon en- 
tered Russia in 1812. Prussia had been humbled to the 
dust, but the strong feeling of nationality rising there and 
spreading thence to other German countries prepared the 
way for the War of Liberation and Napoleon's final down- 
fall. 

During the nineteenth century nationalism developed 
ever more strongly. To the impulse of the French 
Revolution succeeded the effects of the Industrial Revolu- 
tion, improved communication, and general systems of 
education. People were brought together in cities and 
towns more than previously, and there they could be more 
quickly and easily reached by a common feeling. As 
the railroads, steamships, telegraphs, and newspapers did 
their work, it is true that all the parts of Europe and in- 
deed of the world were bound in union as never before; but 
the effects of this unification were felt more strongly within 
the boundaries of a country than through an entire con- 
tinent, and tended more toward the development of 
nationalism than any international spirit. Especially 
did the spread of education make it possible for the old 
literature and language and the national character and 
consciousness embodied in them to affect more strongly 
large bodies of people and bind them closely together. 
Early in the nineteenth century renewed study of the 
Greek classics in Greece prepared the way for revival of 
nationality there and for winning independence. Dur- 
ing the first half of the century growing national conscious- 
ness prepared the way for a united Italy and a united 
Germany at last. By 1870 almost all Italy except Rome 
had been brought together in a strong nation state, and 
by 1866 most of the German j)eople had been assembled 
in two great groups which would shortly be united in a 
German Empire. 

If nationality was bringing together groups of people 




2. RACIAL 




)F EUROPE 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



37 



in strong unions for their happiness and advantage, it 
was also dividing European society more sharply, and 
threatening to break to pieces states not well united. 
Under the impulse of their national feeling and interests 
Frenchmen and Germans were preparing to fight out their 
differences in a mortal struggle. In 1848 in the Hapsburg 
dominions Germans were hoping to Teutonize the subject 
races so as to make one stronger nation; but in Hungary 
the Magyars planned to Magyarize the Slavic peoples, 
while the Slavs in both Austria and Hungary — Bohemians, 
Serbs, Croats, as well as the Rumans of Transylvania — 
yearned to keep their own language and culture and even 
to attain independence. In 1867 the Germans of Austria 
had been forced to concede equality to the Magyars, but 
the two then arranged to hold down the other peoples, 
who remained as unwilling subjects. Even in Ireland, 
where British conquest, apparently, had at last been 
succeeded by assimilation, and where by 1850 the Celtic 
language began to seem doomed to extinction, the Young 
Ireland movement, a precursor of the present Sinn Fein, 
was striving to preserve the old spirit and language, and 
waken Irish nationality again. 



National 
feeling also 
a disintegrat- 
ing force 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The causes of the French Revolution: E. J. Lowell, The Eve 
of the French Revolution (1892) ; Arthur Young, Travels in France 
and Italy during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 (many editions) ; 
Aime Cherest, La Chute de VAncien Regime, 1787-1789, 3 vols. 
(1884-6); Charles Gomel, Les Causes Financieres de la RSvolu- 
tion Frangaise, 2 vols. (1892-3) ; Maxime Kovalevsky, La France 
Economique et Sociale a la Veille de la Revolution, 2 vols. (1909-11) 
excellent. 

Political and social thought before the Revolution: T. F. 
Rocquain, L' Esprit Rivolutionnaire avant la Revolution, 1715- 
1789 (1878), trans, by J. D. Hunting (1891); Henri See, Les 
Idies Politiques en France au XVI IF Siecle (1920). For the 
great writers who assisted and interpreted the changes: John 



38 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

(Viscount) Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopcedists, 2 vols. 
(1891), Voltaire (1903), Critical Miscellanies, 4 vols. (1892- 
1908); Arthur Chuquet, J. J. Rousseau (1901). It is greatly 
desirable that the student examine some of the writings them- 
selves: Montesquieu, De VEsprit des Lois (1748); Rousseau, 
Contrat Social (1762); Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique 
(1764). 

The Revolution : the best of the shorter works is Louis Made- 
lin. La RSvolution (1911), trans. The French Revolution (1916). 
Also H. E. Bourne, The Revolutionary Period in Europe (1763- 
1815) (1914) ; J. H. Rose, The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, 
1789-1815],{1898). Of longer works the best is Alphonse Aulard, 
Histoire Politique de la RSvolution Frangaise, 1789-1804- (3d. ed. 
1905.), trans, by Bernard Miall, 4 vols. (1910). Of longer works: 
Albert Sorel, UEurope et la Revolution Frangaise, 8 vols. (1885- 
1904) ; H. M. Stephens, A History of the French Revolution, 2 
vols. (1886-91); Heinrich von Sybel, Geschichte der Revolution- 
zeit von 1789, 5 vols. (3d ed. 1865-79), trans, by W. C. Perry, 
4 vols. (1867-9). 

Laws, constitutions, and sources: L. G. W. Legg, Select 
Documents Illustrative of the French Revolution, 2 vols. (1905); 
Leon Cahen and Raymond Guyot, UCEuvre Legislative de la 
Revolution (1913), best. Of the sources there are two great 
collections: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 a 1860: Recueil 
Complet des Dibats LSgislatifs et Politiques des Chambres Fran- 
gaises, 127 vols. (2d ed. 1879-1913) ; P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. 
Roux-Lavergne, Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution Fran- 
gaise, 1789-1815, 40 vols. (1834-8), containing extracts from 
debates, newspapers, and pamphlets of the time. 

Napoleon: H. A. L. Fisher, Napoleon (1912), is the best brief 
study in English. August Fournier, Napoleon I: eine Bio- 
graphic, 3 vols. (3d. ed. 1914), trans, by A. E. Adams (1912), 
is the best of the longer works. Also, R. M. Johnston, Napoleon, 
A Short Biography (1910); F. M. Kircheisen, Napoleon I: Sein 
Leben und Seine Zeit, vols. I-III (1912-14); Frederic Masson, 
Napolion et Sa Famille, 12 vols. (5th ed. 1897-1915) ; J. H. Rose, 
The Life of Napoleon I (ed. 1907), The Personality of Napoleon 
(1912); W. M. Sloane, The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 4 vols, 
(ed. 1910); L. A. Thiers, Histoire du Considat et de VEmpire, 
20 vols. (1844-62), laudatory. F. J. Maccunn, The Contem- 
porary English View of Napoleon (1914), for much rare and 
curious contemporary information. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 39 

The settlement of 1814-15: C. K. Webster, The Congress of 
Vienna, 18U-1815 (1918), the best for the Congress; W. A. 
Philhps, The Confederation of Europe (2d ed. 1919); A. Sorel, 
Essais d'Histoire et de Critique, 12th ed. (1884), contains ac- 
counts of such leading statesmen of the period as Metternich 
and Talleyrand. 

Political Conditions and Progress: F. M. Anderson, Constitu- 
tions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of 
France, 1789-1901 (ed. 1909); W. L. Blease, A Short History 
of English Liberalism (1913); Hans Blum, Die Deutsche Revolu- 
tion, 18If8-18J^9 (1897), best study of; Albert Cremieux, La 
Revolution de Fevrier (1912), best account of the Revolution of 
1848 in France; G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in 
Modern France (1892), excellent account in brief essays on the 
period 1789-1871 in France; H. A. L. Fisher, Studies in Napole- 
onic Statesmanship: Germany (1903), brilliant and admirable. 
The Republican Tradition in Europe (1911); Evelyn (Countess) 
Martinengo-Cesaresco, The Liberation of Italy, 1815-1870 
(1895); Paul Matter, La Prusse et la Revolution de 18J^8 (1903); 
Sir T. E. May, Constitutional History of England Since the Ac- 
cession of George III (edited and continued by Francis Holland), 
3 vols. (1912); W. R. A. Morfill, History of Russia from the Birth 
of Peter the Great to the Death of Alexander II (1902) ; E. Ollivier, 
L'Empire Liberal, 17 vols. (1895-1914); E. and A. G. Porritt, 
The Unreformed House of Commons, 2 vols. (ed. 1909) ; G. M. 
Trevelyan, Lord Grey of the Reform Bill (1920) ; Sir A. W. Ward, 
Germany, 1815-1890, 3 vols. (1916-19). 

National feeling: J. H. Rose, Nationality in Modern History 
(1916). 



CHAPTER III 

NEW INVENTIONS AND THE INDUS^ 
TRIAL REVOLUTION 

Nam instrumenta, navigandi possunt fieri sine hominibus remiganti- 
bus, ut naves maximae, fluviales et marrnse, ferantur unico homine 
regente, majori velocitate quam si plense essent hominibus. Item 
currus possunt fieri ut sine animali moveantur cum impetu insesti- 
mabili. . . . Item instrumentum, parvum in quantitate, ad elevan- 
dum et deprimendum pondera quasi infinita, quo nihil utQius est 
in casu. 
Roger Bacon, De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, c. iv. 
(c. 1249). 

Les conditions du travail subissaient la plus profonde modifica- 
tion qu'elles aient eprouvee depuis I'origine des societes. Deux 
machines, desormais immortelles, la machine a vapeur et la ma- 
chine a filer, bouleversaient le vieux systeme commercial et faisaient 
naitre presque au meme moment des produits materiels et des ques- 
tions sociales, mconnus a nos peres. 
Adolphe Blanqui, Histdre de VEconomie Politique en Europe 
ii. 207, 208 (1837). 

The essence of the Industrial Revolution is the substitution of com- 
petition for the medieval regulations which had previously 
controlled the production and distribution of wealth. On this 
account it is not only one of the most important facts of English 
history, but Europe owes to it the growth of two great systems 
of thought — Economic Science, and its antithesis. Socialism. 

Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, p. 85 
(1884). 

Older con- DIFFERENT as conditions now are from what they were 

ditions fifty years ago, the difference between 1870 and 1750 or 

1789 is much more striking. In many respects conditions 
in the second half of the eighteenth century were nearer 
to what they had been five hundred or a thousand years 
before than to what they were a hundred years later. 

40 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



41 



There were no railroads then, no steamboats, no tele- 
graphs, no telephones. It was difficult for most people 
to get light after the sun went down or heat when the 
weather was cold. Refrigeration or preserving of food 
was scarcely employed yet. All sorts of inventions and 
mechanical appliances, which later on were to make 
life so much easier and more pleasant, had not yet ap- 
peared. And above all, the machines which were to 
revolutionize industry and transportation and make it 
possible for the first time in the history of the world for 
a great surplus of necessaries and luxuries to be produced, 
had not yet appeared, except to some extent in England, 
and even there were only at the beginning of their service. 

By 1870 steam and electricity were the servants of man 
and for him were performing countless tasks, though many 
of the devices employed then seem very crude compared 
with what came later. By that time in every important 
country in western Europe machines in factories were 
performing vastly more work than men unaided could 
have accomplished, and were producing immense store 
of manufactured things. By that time, through ap- 
plication of machinery, means of transportation had been 
so revolutionized that it was possible for travellers to 
move quickly and freight to be transported more easily 
than ever before. It was now possible for many people 
in western Europe to get coal for heating their houses, 
and artificial lighting was being generally used. News 
was now collected quickly, and immediately disseminated 
in great numbers of newspapers printed by machinery. 
Such large alterations were then going on that the changes 
in the nineteenth century have seemed greater and more 
important than in all of the centuries preceding. These 
alterations were most of all due to numerous scientific 
inventions, and to the machines which brought about 
the Industrial Revolution. 

Rude steam engines, invented at least as early as the 



Important 
things lack- 
ing there 



Conditions 
in 1870 



42 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Transpor- 
tation 



Interchange 
of commodi- 
ties and 
materials 



Conveni- 
ences in 
dwelling 
houses 



end of the seventeenth century, were first used for pump- 
ing water from mines. Many since forgotten probably 
contributed to the development, but the invention is now 
associated especially with the name of Thomas New- 
comen (1705) and above all with that of James Watt 
(1769). Many were the industrial uses to which these 
engines were put in England. At the beginning of the 
nineteenth century efforts were made to apply them to 
moving vehicles on land and ships on the sea. Along with 
several other inventors Robert Fulton, an American, 
devoted himself to the making of a "steamboat," and fully 
succeeded by 1807. In the next year Richard Trevithick 
ran the first steam engine along a railway in London. In 
1825 George Stephenson made a far more powerful loco- 
motive, and presently railway systems connected all the 
principal cities of Europe. In 1838 the steamship Great 
Western crossed the Atlantic in two weeks. 

The result of this revolution in transportation was that 
food could be moved from districts where it was produced 
to other places far away, with a speed never possible be- 
fore. In like manner the materials for building and con- 
struction were carried from the forests and the quarries 
and the mines, making more easily possible the construc- 
tion of great edifices, gigantic bridges, and public im- 
provements, on a scale scarcely dreamed of before, as well 
as a multitude of dwelling houses. And because of im- 
provements in mining and the revolution in transporta- 
tion, coal was easily procured to be used in factories for 
manufacturing and to heat the houses in which people 
lived. 

The habitations of people were presently furnished 
with more conveniences than had ever been the case in 
the past. Not since the time when the great Roman cities 
were provided with water brought through stone pipes 
had men and women had plentiful supply. In the Middle 
Ages and for some time after, even in the prosperous 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



43 



cities and towns, people generally got their water from 
wells and cisterns. There was seldom a suflBcient supply 
of water in the houses themselves. Such was the in- 
convenience of getting it that most people washed them- 
selves seldom. Baths were apt to be taken in rivers 
when warm weather came; and a London apprentice 
of the eighteenth century declared that sometimes for 
six weeks he never washed his face. It was convenient 
to be dirty; and in the Middle Ages some had regarded 
filth as a sign of goodness. The result was the numerous 
skin diseases, with which people were once tortured much 
more than now, and the many epidemics and plagues 
which came from dirt and unsanitary living. In the 
latter part of the eighteenth century and especially during 
the nineteenth, the great cities and even the more prosper- 
ous towns brought plentiful supplies of water from some 
undefiled source at a distance, and distributed it through 
small pipes of iron into houses. The better heating now 
made it possible to get supplies of hot water in dwellings, 
something not easily done since hypocausts were used by 
the Romans. This again led to greater cleanliness in 
winter, and presently bathtubs of wood lined with tin 
appeared in increasing numbers, and many people now 
bathed as often as once in a week. 

During this same time a marvellous change was made 
in artificial lighting. In the absence of sunlight, always 
man's principal, and often his sole, reliance, torches, 
braziers, candles, and lamps had been used at night by 
those who were able to afford them. But down to the 
beginning of the nineteenth century it was not even easy 
to get fire or a light in the first place, since this was usually 
done by flint and tinder or else keeping a coal alive. 
Moreover, oil and tallow were expensive for most people 
and not to be obtained in large amounts. About the end 
of the eighteenth century gas made from coal was used to 
illuminate factories and homes; during the next fifty 



Supply of 
water 



Artificial 
lighting 



44 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Machinery 



The 

Industrial 

Revolution 



years its use was widely extended; and poor and ghastly 
as such light often seemed to a later generation, it fur- 
nished good artificial illumination for more people than 
anything before it. In 1782, Argand, a Swiss inventor 
working in England, perfected a lamp better than any 
previously used. Oil for such lamps now began to be 
obtained in ever greater quantities, first from whales, then 
petroleum from the earth, until more and more people 
without gas supply could have what even now seems a 
fairly good light. Then about 1827 certain Englishmen 
invented matches, slender splints of wood dipped in some 
material easily rubbed and ignited: an invention simple 
enough, but affording as much convenience as almost 
anything in the nineteenth century. 

While these changes, one after another, were effecting 
so great a revolution in the life of Europe, and affording 
to unnumbered common people conveniences previously 
in the reach of the wealthy alone and often not to be ob- 
tained at any price, another series of changes was trans- 
forming life even more profoundly. These changes came 
in consequence of the introduction of labor-saving ma- 
chines, which made it possible to produce greater quanti- 
ties of goods more quickly and more easily than ever 
before, and which presently effected an immense altera- 
tion in industry and in social relations. 

The Industrial Revolution, as this movement has long 
been called, began in Great Britain. During the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries there had been in all the 
principal countries of western Europe much progress in 
science and invention. In the eighteenth century, for 
particular reasons, this progress entered on a new stage 
in England and Scotland. The position of Great Britain 
made her safe from foreign invaders, and there was already 
very great wealth accumulated from business and trade. 
A strong, well-organized government afforded security 
and order, at the same time that the inhabitants enjoyed 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



45 



protection of the law and had much individual freedom. 
The old guild restrictions, by which industry had first 
been regulated and then retarded, had passed away in 
Britain much more than in neighboring Continental 
countries, giving much freedom and opportunity for the 
adventurous and those capable of embarking in new 
enterprises. Moreover, the genius of the British people 
tended particularly toward the practical application of 
science and the making of things which would work for 
some purpose. Above all, though before that time men had 
paid little attention to it, Britain possessed huge stores of 
coal and iron, and, what was equally important, they lay 
in such close proximity that they could easily be used 
together. 

The Industrial Revolution began in England with a 
series of inventions which revolutionized the textile in- 
dustry. In medieval times good clothing was difficult to 
make and expensive to buy. Notwithstanding that 
princes and great men were splendidly appareled and had 
abundance of fine raiment, the process of making clothes 
was so difficult and lengthy that the multitude of man- 
kind could not have many garments, and wore such as 
they had as long as they could hold them together. The 
fibres, cotton, silk, or wool, had to be slowly arranged by 
hand, then patiently spun on a wheel worked by foot, 
then the threads woven by hand into cloth. Relatively 
to the number of people, not much cloth could be pro- 
duced thus, save by disproportionate expenditure of time. 

In 1738 an Englishman, John Kay, invented the flying 
shuttle with which weaving could be done more rapidly 
than ever before. No great change followed, however, 
since the thread used by the weavers was still slowly spun 
in the old manner. But about 1770 a spinning "jenny" 
or engine was completed by James Hargreaves, in which 
a number of spinning wheels could be turned by revolving 
a crank, and a spinner could now make eight threads at 



The old 

textile in- 
dustry 



Revolution 
in the 
textile in- 
dustry 



46 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



spinning 
machines 
and weaving 
machines 



Immense 
conse- 
quences 



The old in- 
dustrial 
system 



once. As a result of these mechanical contrivances 
manufacturers, that is laborers working with their hands, 
in the old way, could accomplish much more than be- 
fore. Nine years later Samuel Crompton perfected the 
"spinning-mule" by which a great deal more thread could 
be produced. The next large step forward consisted in the 
operation of these machines by power. In 1769 Richard 
Arkwright began to run his spinning engines by water 
power. In 1785 Edmund Cartwright applied water power 
to a weaving machine, so that one boy with the machine 
could make more cloth than three skilled weavers without 
it. During all this time the steam engine had been develop- 
ing; it was soon used in the new factories to drive an in- 
creasing number of new machines, which were invented 
for many different kinds of work. 

These machines, especially the power machines, soon 
brought enormous changes. In 1837 a French writer, 
looking back over the progress which by that time had 
become much clearer, declared that while his countrymen 
had been passing through such great experiences in the 
French Revolution, the English had begun their revolution 
in the domain of industry. "Conditions of work," he 
said, "underwent the profoundest modification which 
had been known since society began." Not only could 
immensely greater quantities of goods be produced, but 
there arose a new controlling class, the capitalists who 
owned the machines, and the position of the artisans 
was soon greatly altered. 

In medieval times manufacturing had been rudely 
carried on in people's houses, or under the guild system, 
in which masters, or small proprietors, worked them- 
selves along with apprentices in small establishments. 
In course of time the guilds decayed, and by the eigh- 
teenth century in England had largely disappeared. But 
manufacturing continued to be done in small estab- 
lishments, mainly in the houses of the workmen them- 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



47 



selves. The man of the house wove his cloth or made 
his knives or his shoes, assisted by his wife and his chil- 
dren; or, where the guild system survived, the master 
worked in the midst of the apprentices who under him 
were learning the trade. During the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries this arrangement was being partly 
superseded, especially in England, by small factories and 
capitalism; nevertheless, most of the manufacturing con- 
tinued to be done by the domestic system, in the houses of 
the workers, many of whom were their own masters, 
toiling for themselves. Where the master worked with 
apprentices or hired workingmen the relations which 
existed between them were necessarily personal, intimate, 
and close. The father might be a little tyrant over 
children and wife; a bad master might abuse or overwork 
his apprentices; but there were many who looked out for 
the welfare of their helpers, and this they were able to do 
because they lived and worked in the midst of these help- 
ers. 

During the eighteenth century capitalism was playing 
more and more part in the organization of manufactur- 
ing, wealthy men paying house workers for their labor, 
supplying them with the material to be wrought, and 
taking from them the manufactured goods. The new 
machines themselves at first involved no very great 
change. The first machines were not very cumbersome 
or costly, and successful workmen could buy them. The 
heavy power machines, which presently appeared, how- 
ever, could only be obtained by those who had consider- 
able capital to buy them and put up large buildings in 
which to instal them. Accordingly, in England, and 
afterward wherever the large machines were brought 
into use, the domestic system of industry was largely 
crushed out. With the new machines the work could be 
done much more easily, and much more produced, so that 
workers under the old system could not long continue 



Domestic 
industry 



The new 

industrial 

system 



48 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Domestic 
industry 
crushed out 



Depression 
of the 
workers 



competition. For a while they would strive desperately, 
working longer hours and selling their products for less 
than they had taken before, but generally in the end they 
failed. Most of them went from their cottages and 
spinning-wheels and hand-looms to the towns where the 
factories were rising, and asked for factory employment. 
In consequence, the large class of small manufacturers and 
masters dwindled away, and in their place arose a small 
class of powerful and wealthy capitalist owners of fac- 
tories with large machines. Over against them was an 
army of employees working in these factories for wages. 
Constantly the gap between employers and employees 
widened, and less and less close were relations between 
them. Once the master had known his men and worked 
with them; now the capitalist employed hundreds of 
"hands," with whom he often had little contact and no 
sympathy and no acquaintance. There had always been 
a gap between the upper and the lower members of the 
industrial system; now it became a great gulf, constantly 
more striking to the eye, and ever more difficult to cross. 
Under the new system the condition of the workers at 
the start became rapidly worse. The machines forced 
them out of the old way of working, but many could find 
no employment in the new system. It had long been 
understood that new inventions, whatever benefits were 
to come later, would deprive some workers of the chance 
to labor. Early in the sixteenth century in Danzig a 
certain one had invented a weaving machine, which made 
four or six pieces at once; but the mayor, so the story 
went, "being apprehensive that this invention might 
throw a large number of workmen on the streets," secretly 
put the inventor to death. In the seventeenth century 
such machines brought about riots among the weavers 
in Holland and in England, and using them was long 
forbidden in some of the German states. Now also in 
England it was found that with labor-saving machines not 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



49 



so many workmen were required, and it was soon dis- 
covered, moreover, that women and children could do 
much of the work formerly done by skilled men. The 
artisans thus thrown out of work resisted their fate, 
smashing the new looms or trying to prevent other workers 
from using them; but this soon came to an end when the 
authority of the law was turned against them. The 
crowds of workers, larger than the number needed by the 
factory owners, bid against each other for employment, 
and were thus completely at the mercy of employers, be- 
ing forced to accept such wages and terms as were offered. 
Moreover, the Industrial Revolution resulted not 
merely from introducing machines which revolutionized 
work, but from a new policy with respect to industrial 
regulation. Formerly in England and elsewhere in 
Europe the general policy had been for the local authori- 
ties or the government of the state to regulate industry, 
and many a law had been passed to assess the amount of 
wages, many an ordinance to specify the conditions under 
which work should be done. These regulations had to 
some extent been made in the interests of the upper classes, 
but they were also intended by the state for the protection 
of workers. During the eighteenth century, however, 
the idea developed that all such outside regulation was 
interference and restriction, which hindered much more 
than it helped. A group of French thinkers taught the 
doctrine of laissez-faire, that the state should let private 
enterprise alone, and this teaching was taken over into 
England, especially by Adam Smith. Rousseau and his 
contemporaries were asserting that men had natural 
rights, which had been lessened or annulled by interference 
from the governments above them; and from this was 
developed the idea that men should have complete free- 
dom, without any governmental regulation, to manage 
their business as they chose, or to work under such con- 
ditions as they agreed to themselves. Unfortunately 



Women and 
children in 
the factories 



The state 
and industry 



Laissez-faire 



50 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



"Natural 
laws'' 



Industrial 
evUs 



it was soon evident that "freedom of contract" and 
laissez-faire, whatever their actual and theoretical merits, 
and however much they were acclaimed by economists 
and philosophers then, soon gave more power to capitalists 
and employers, and put the laborers in more lowly sub- 
jection. 

The government ceased intervening to regulate and 
protect the workers, and the new laws which were passed 
were made in the interests of the upper class which con- 
trolled the state. By the employing class laissez-faire 
was welcomed and praised, as was the doctrine then 
current that the best results in human relations would 
follow from each man seeking his own selfish interest. 
Poverty and suffering came from natural laws, it was said, 
which no human kindness could remove. It was proper 
that capitalists should take as high profits and give as 
low wages as possible, since all this was worked out 
through the "natural laws." If more than the market 
wages were given, it would simply result in poor people 
having a larger number of children, after which conditions 
would be as before. 

So, while great prosperity came to many factory owners 
and lenders of money, while Britain went forward with 
immense progress in wealth and in power, while she ob- 
tained from her factories and her ships the strength and 
the resources with which she held out against Napoleon 
to the end, horrible results affected some of her people. 
Workers with their families came from villages and small 
towns to the factory towns seeking work. Wages were 
driven down far below what a family could live on. Some 
could find no work at all. Mournful and squalid quarters 
rose rapidly to house the workers, and in these houses 
they were huddled together until the living conditions 
became terrible. It was soon discovered that the machines 
could be operated still more cheaply by getting the labor 
of children, and more and more were children put to 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



51 



work in the factories. At first the foundlings and miser- Child labor 
able inmates of workhouses, who were purchased and 
trafficked in almost like slaves, were obtained. They 
were put to more toil than they could endure, often urged 
by the "overlooker's" lash, imprisoned at night lest they 
run away, and given no wages, since according to the law 
they were considered to be apprentices learning their 
trade. As a result of this competition still more men were 
put out of work and wages were brought even lower. 
Presently parents were forced to do what had previously 
been regarded as a great disgrace, put their children out 
to work in the factories. Under the old system there had 
been much labor by children, but most of it had been 
done for parents in the home. Now the conditions under 
which children worked became worse, and seemed still 
worse since they could be more readily seen. After a 
while many men remained idle, supported by the labor of 
their women and children. In the midst of dirt, heat, 
stench, whir of wheels, and clatter of looms, children were 
working long hours, when they should have been at 
play, or, according to our ideas now, at school. Women 
were working so long and so hard that they were per- 
manently weakening themselves, unable to bear strong 
children, or unable to give birth at all. In the factory 
towns were idle men and underpaid men. The standard 
of living went lower and lower. 

Such is the description which contemporaries have Degeneracy 
handed down. Doubtless the picture should not all be 
dark, and no doubt the evils have been exaggerated and 
dwelt on too much. It should be remembered that under 
the old system there were many evils, much hardship, 
and many bad results. The evils of the period of transi- 
tion, the time between the breakdown of the old system, 
with the decay of state regulation, and the new period when 
machine industry and capitalism were thoroughly estab- 
lished, are not well remembered now; but those evils were 



52 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The workers 
helpless 



Gradual 
ameliora- 
tion 



great, and were afterward lessened by the Industrial 
Revolution itself. Notwithstanding all this, the evil con- 
sequences of the Revolution were presently evident in 
the degeneracy of a portion of the people. For a long 
time in England there had been a sturdy agricultural 
population from which came the fighting men who won 
England's wars; now the rural population declined, and 
it was seen that the factory towns contained many poor, 
ill -nourished, overworked men, women, and children, 
whose health and physical strength were decreasing. 

It may be that time would have brought some adjust- 
ment, and that the new conditions would presently have 
been made less hard; but so bad did they actually appear 
that some immediate remedy was sought for. After the 
end of the Napoleonic wars, when men had space to think 
of other things than defending England from foreign foes, 
it was evident that there was much discontent among the 
lower classes of the population in Britain. These were 
the years when socialism began to attract attention, and 
when the Chartists asked for reform. But the workers 
themselves could do little. The concentration of wealth 
and industrial power, which the machines and the new 
organization were bringing, made it hopeless for individual 
workers to resist their capitalist masters. Only by unit- 
ing could they hope with success to oppose them. Long 
before workmen had attempted to form combinations, 
but always such unions were forbidden by law, and by the 
beginning of the nineteenth century the authorities gen- 
erally considered that unions of workmen were harmful to 
industry and dangerous to the state. In 1799 and in 1800 
they had been specifically forbidden in Britain. 

It was afterward evident that • no simple remedy would 
avail, since so large and so profound was the alteration 
brought to pass that amelioration and adjustment could 
only come from patient effort and the working of time. 
In Britain, and later on elsewhere, the doctrine of laissez- 




3 THE COAL, IRON, AI 




»ACK SEA 

,,,ntlnopie 

h'ternational "-^ — —^\^^ Tiflis 
! of the Straits X ® ^•^'' 

U R K E Y >v../- 

i Greece 



I N 

oAleppo '\ 

^^ ( A S I A > 



®Teheran 
PERSIA 



Kunduz° V- ■ 



AFGHANISTAN 



RESOURCES OF EUROPE 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



53 



faire was presently abandoned more and more. It became 
apparent to the best people that "enlightened self-inter- 
est" did not bring the best results. Laws were presently 
passed by which the government limited the hours of 
labor for women and children, and children under a certain 
age were forbidden to work. In 1824 and 1825 trade 
unions of workingmen were legalized, though for a long 
time thereafter the authorities hampered them greatly. 
The regulation of industry by the state, however great a 
change in political philosophy it involved, was at first 
insufficient and ill-enforced, while the first trade unions 
were usually too weak to win contests with employers. 
To some people during this period it seemed that the 
entire existing system was now wrong; such great changes 
had been made that fundamental reforms and a different 
social system were needed before the resultant evils could 
be cured. Thus arose one of the most important intel- 
lectual and social developments of the nineteenth century, 
the greater growth of socialist doctrines. 

The Industrial Revolution was first marked and im- 
portant in Great Britain. Perhaps it might quickly have 
spread to the Continent, but for a generation the neigh- 
boring countries were absorbed in the French Revolution 
and the exhausting wars which followed. By 1815 
England had a long start, had amassed much wealth, 
and had become the workshop of the world. But the 
industrial changes presently took place in the other 
countries. In France the new methods and machines 
soon appeared, and along with them the factories, the 
slums, and the striking new social problems. A great 
industrial development followed with much prosperity, 
but the French had less coal and iron than the British, and 
in the end it was seen that the temperament of the people 
did not so easily adapt itself to large-scale production and 
machine work. Hence industrialism never did assume 
such large proportions in France as in England. During 



J^aissez- 
faire partly 
abandoned 



Spread of 
the Indus- 
trial Revolu- 
tion 



54 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Progress 
eastward in 
Europe 



General 
results 



The new 
upper class 



the same time the Revolution was beginning in Belgium. 
Eastward it spread across the German countries, and by 
1870 the north German states were in the midst of vast 
industrial development. It did not come to Italy until 
after this time, and it did not reach Russia until the latter 
part of the nineteenth century. It began to affect the 
countries of western and central Europe in the first half 
of the century, and some of the countries of eastern 
Europe, to a less extent, in the years which followed. 
Generally speaking, the Industrial Revolution made 
greatest changes only in those countries like Britain, 
Belgium, and Germany, where great deposits of coal and 
iron were at hand. Italy, Spain, the Balkans lagged far 
behind, since mostly they lacked these resources. 

The greater results of the Industrial Revolution in 
Europe were not apparent for a while, and some of them 
were not understood until long after 1870, when industrial 
growth had reached far greater proportions. Generally 
speaking, the consequences were an alteration in the rela- 
tive importance of classes of people in particular districts, 
alteration of the relative importance of districts or coun- 
tries themselves, the rise of socialism and schemes for a 
social organization entirely different from the prevailing 
ones, immense changes in warfare and relative military 
power, increasing importance of urban life, an alteration 
in the position and status of women, the development of 
democracy and the spread of the franchise, an increase in 
the quantity of things which serve the necessities and the 
pleasures of man, and a greater material development than 
had ever been possible before. 

In antiquity, during the Middle Ages, and down to 
the end of the eighteenth century, land was always the 
most important property, and the aristocracy, the upper 
class, was based upon the holding of landed property. 
Under the "feudal system" of the Middle Ages holding 
of land on terms of some sort of service or payment was 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



55 



the very foundation of social organization. The great 
landholders were the nobles, the seigneurs, the lords of the 
manor, in possession of political power, local jurisdiction, 
and sometimes of the offices of state. In the eighteenth 
century, under the centralized governments of western 
Europe, they had long since lost all independent political 
power, but beneath the sovereign they made the class which 
had the privileges and held the property in the days of the 
Old Regime. The exceptions were England and Holland, 
where the greater members of the middle class, the bankers 
and the masters of commerce, shared the control of affairs 
in the state with the landed nobility above them. 

The effects of the French Revolution, and gradually 
its later consequences, took away from the noble pro- 
prietors their power, special privileges, and in some places 
even the land on which their previous position had been 
based. But if the French Revolution abased one upper 
class, the effects of the Industrial Revolution assisted in 
the raising of another. Long before 1789 it was evident 
that in the more advanced countries of western Europe 
a middle class of bankers, business men, and members of 
professions was becoming increasingly important. As 
the old aristocracy went down before the new forces this 
bourgeoisie in France, and later on elsewhere, got control 
and reaped some of the greatest benefits from the changes. 
It was soon evident that the destruction of Revolutionary 
times had not levelled all men and made them all equal. 
"Aristocracy always exists," said Napoleon. "Destroy 
it in the nobility, it removes itself immediately to the rich 
and powerful houses of the middle class." And he added, 
what seemed more prophetic still later: "Destroy it in 
these, it survives and takes refuge with the leaders of 
the workshops and people." He, doubtless, understood 
little of the Industrial Revolution, but in the first half 
of the nineteenth century it had already created a new 
class of wealthy and powerful men, who more and more 



The landed 
aristocracy 



The bour- 
geoisie 



A ruling 
class 



56 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Power of the 
bourgeoisie 



Increase of 
population 
in Great 
Britain 



got control of the governments of their countries, and who 
presently constituted an upper caste between whom and 
the great mass of wage-earners and employees there 
was in the end almost as great a gulf as once existed be- 
tween lords of the manor and villeins. In the Middle 
Ages aristocrats and the strong and able men had gone 
into the Church and risen to be powerful ecclesiastics, or 
else had been captains in the wars, or noblemen with 
castles, men-at-arms, and manorial rights over their 
fellows; now such men went into industry or commerce, 
and, when they succeeded, held similar power as a result 
of their gold and their factories and machines. In the 
course of the nineteenth century in many places they 
supplanted the power of kings and the power of the old 
nobility completely. "Our epoch," said Marx and Engels 
in their Communist Manifesto (1848), is "the epoch of the 
bourgeoisie." The socialists looked upon these industrial 
and financial magnates as their principal opponents; and 
in the twentieth century the extreme socialists, the 
Bolsheviki of Russia, assailed them as the arch-enemies to 
be overthrown by a rising of the proletariat, the mass of 
the workers. 

In parts of western Europe a great increase of popula- 
tion followed the Industrial Revolution. The inhabitants 
of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
have been estimated at 175,000,000; a hundred years later 
the population was 400,000,000. In countries like Great 
Britain, Belgium, and Germany this was undoubtedly 
due most of all to the mighty industrial expansion. In 
1801 the population of Great Britain was about 10,500,000; 
a century later it was more than 36,000,000. During that 
time English agriculture diminished relatively, and it 
would have been impossible to feed such increasing 
multitudes had it not been for the manufactured goods 
which paid for increasing importations of food. Three 
fourths of the people at last were engaged in industry and 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



57 



commerce. In the earlier part of the nineteenth century 
attempt had been made to maintain Enghsh agriculture 
by protection, but after the tariffs were removed with 
the repeal (1846) of the Corn Laws it had to endure 
competition with the great grain fields of America and 
Russia. As time went on, farming was more and more 
abandoned, and the island became a vast industrial hive. 
Increasingly was Britain less able to feed her growing 
population except with food-stuffs imported. For a long 
time she could do this easily enough, for being first in the 
field she found markets among other people still mostly 
engaged in agriculture, and she had besides a great colonial 
empire in which manufacturing was not yet established, 
and from which raw materials were easily obtained. In 
the first half of the twentieth century, however, it was 
evident that each country desired to develop its own 
manufactures as soon as it could; and evidently when 
this came to pass it would no longer be so easy for the 
older industrial communities, lacldng local agricultural 
support, to make their own living. 

Similar results followed in the German countries, es- 
pecially after the founding of the German Empire (1871). 
In 1837 the population of the lands later on contained in 
this empire had been 33,000,000; by 1910 there were 
65,000,000. By that time three fifths of the people were 
engaged in manufacturing and trade; agriculture was 
no longer sufiicient to support the population; and many 
of the people really got their living by making manu- 
factured goods to be exchanged abroad for food. But 
German exporters had to compete in a field already largely 
taken by the British, which was, moreover, slowly dimin- 
ishing as other countries were establishing their industrial 
systems. Furthermore, the Germans had no great colonial 
empire in which to exchange manufactures for the raw 
materials needed. The difficulties which arose thence 
probably had something to do with bringing on the 



Decline of 
agriculture 



Increase of 
population 
in Germany 



58 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Relative im- 
portance of 
districts 
changed 



The 
Netherlands 



Southern 
Europe 



Great War, in which Germany struck to win what she 
did not have. In the future, countries hke Great Britain 
and Germany will have more difficulty in continuing to 
expand population and wealth, so far as such expansion 
is based on selling manufactures to other people for food. 

The Industrial Revolution brought about a shifting of 
population from one district to another, and brought more 
rapid growth in some countries than in others. Down to 
the middle of the eighteenth century the rich and im- 
portant parts of England had always been the east and 
the south, containing the principal seaports and the best 
agricultural lands. After 1760 this gradually changed until 
the larger number of people lived near the coal and the 
iron, about the industrial centers of the west and the north. 
Scotland, poor and unimportant until she was admitted to 
share in England's trade (1707), became very prosperous 
after the middle of the eighteenth century, when industrial 
life developed along the Clyde. In the early Middle 
Ages Flanders and the western Netherlands contained 
rich cities and flourishing small manufactures, but when 
these were ruined they became less important than the 
northern Netherlands (Holland) with their mighty and 
prosperous commerce. But after the establishment of 
the independence of the Flemish and French Netherlands 
as the Kingdom of Belgium (1831), the Industrial Revolu- 
tion brought great factories and huge prosperity based on 
the coal and iron of the valley of the Meuse, and Belgium 
went forward faster than Holland. During the Middle 
Ages southern Europe was wealthier and more important 
than the northern part; but later it was evident that the 
best deposits of coal and iron were in the north, and the 
Industrial Revolution was one of the principal factors 
in making the north so much more powerful and rich. 
Until the middle of the nineteenth century France con- 
tinued to be as populous as Germany and stronger; 
but after that time, when German unity was accompanied 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



59 



by mighty industrial growth, Germany went forward so 
much more rapidly than France that in 1914 she had half 
again as much wealth and nearly twice the population. 

Industrial development gradually brought great changes 
in military strength, which were beginning to be apparent 
by 1870, though they were not clearly perceived until 
long after that time. As the Industrial Revolution pro- 
gressed, machines and tools got to be so much more power- 
ful and complicated that an alteration took place not gener- 
ally understood before 1914-15. By that time the power 
of cannon and rapid-fire guns had become so immeasurably 
great that there was an enormous disparity between men 
supplied with modern death-dealing instruments and the 
very bravest soldiers not so equipped. No longer did 
an army of warlike savages have any chance against 
a few soldiers of some Great Power. A nation's military 
strength was no longer in any direct proportion to the 
number of its fighting men, but altogether to the size of 
its armies equipped with modern weapons and supplied 
with the ammunition which they needed. Only the 
states which possessed suflficient iron and coal, with 
developed industrial systems, numerous factories and 
machines, producing immense quantities of pig-iron, to be 
wrought by skilled workmen into mighty weapons and 
various implements, could hope to fight a great war suc- 
cessfully for any long time. In 1815 Russia had appeared 
a colossus, irresistible if her myriads were capably led; 
a hundred years later the German Empire crushed her 
with all her millions, completely. She had then, it is true, 
the greatest number of fighting-men to call into service, 
but she lacked railroads, factories, trained industrial 
workers, and she was unable to supply the material of 
The industrial strength of Germany was then seen 



war. 



to be so enormous that for a while she easily defeated all 
her opponents. The Great War became essentially a duel 
between Germany and England, the two principal in- 



Industrial- 
ism and mili- 
tary strength 



Russia and 
Germany 



60 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

dustrial powers of Europe, and was finally decided by the 
entrance of the United States, the greatest industrial na- 
tion in the world. 
Urban and The Revolution involved a change from rural to city 

rural life jjfe jn many parts of Europe, and brought a constantly 

greater preponderance of town over country life. Down 
to the end of the eighteenth century there was no large 
community in Europe in which the great majority of the 
people did not make their hving by agriculture in the fields 
about villages in the country. Afterward in countries 
like Britain, Belgium, and the German Empire, where in- 
dustrialism most greatly developed, gradually most of the 
people were to be found in cities and manufacturing 
districts. In the civilized countries of antiquity city life 
had predominated over rural life; during the Middle Ages 
power based on the land was all-important, and this long 
continued to be so; but during the course of the nineteenth 
century the urban communities of western Europe ac- 
quired greater weight than the country districts. "The 
bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the 
towns," said the Communist Manifesto in 1848. 
City life This change involved much progress and some retro- 

gression. Great numbers of people were thus brought 
together by the Industrial Revolution, and mere as- 
sociation gradually gave them the quicker, more open, 
more radical minds, which always have come with city 
life, while they soon discovered the power of numbers and 
of acting together. Hence nothing was more potent than 
the Industrial Revolution in advancing democracy, self- 
government, education, the emancipation and advance- 
ment of women. In many of these towns, it is true, 
there were low wages, filthy habitations, undernourish- 
ment, and degeneracy of body and mind. But these 
conditions never affected all the workers, and as time 
went on conditions were better. On the other hand, as the 
cities became larger, many of their inhabitants were almost 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



61 



cut off from contact with the soil, and removed from 
knowledge of the country, from which their forefathers had 
developed character and derived their principal thoughts. 
Accordingly, many of the inhabitants acquired a new way 
of looking at things, both better and worse than the old. 
It was also true that the artisans and workers of the towns 
were soon mentally more alert, more apt to question 
existing conditions, better able to conceive of changes, 
more insistent in demanding that changes be made, 
and more powerful in bringing them about. It had 
ever been so. The most brilliant civilization of an- 
tiquity arose in the cities; in after times the great re- 
forms in Europe began in the towns. 

During the course of the nineteenth century the ideas 
once formulated in England, then more grandly stated 
in France, then worked out through the American and 
the French Revolutions, were gradually followed by the 
masses in western Europe. Especially in the towns arose 
demand for revision of the franchise and extension to the 
workers of some share in governing the state. In course 
of time in Great Britain, in France, in Italy, and in Bel- 
gium, and to a less extent in the German states, working- 
men and rural laborers were admitted to the franchise, 
and in time tended to secure control. They themselves and 
the classes above them saw that this power could not be 
wisely used unless they had education, which already the 
townspeople were more and more desiring to have. Ac- 
cordingly, in the nineteenth century for the first time in 
the history of mankind, it became one of the great pur- 
poses to see that all men and women should be able to 
read and write. By no means had this been completely 
accomplished by 1870, nor is it yet, save in the most ad- 
vanced and prosperous countries of the world. But in 
those lands where most of the people had gradually 
got some education and some political experience, more 
and more were they demanding reforms in the govern- 



New en- 
vironment 



Results of 

urban 

growth 



62 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The position 
of women 



Christianity 
and woman 



ment, and other reforms which would make their lives 
happier and better. 

In consequence of the Industrial Revolution, probably, 
more than anything else, the position of women was 
changed profoundly. By 1870 there had already been 
alteration in their status in some countries, though much 
larger results would be more evident fifty years later. The 
nineteenth century was the era of great change in the 
history of women. The great movements of the past, 
the Renaissance, the Reformation, even the French 
Revolution, which carried many men so far forward, left 
women much as they had been, inferior and subordinate 
to men. Among savage and barbarous peoples, in primi- 
tive times, though occasionally women had possessed 
political power and were held in high respect, they were 
generally obliged to do most of the work. Among the 
earlier civilized peoples they had usually been the servants 
and chattels of men, though under the Roman Empire 
law and custom gradually gave them the highest position 
held by women before the latter part of the nineteenth 
century. Christianity, since it made people gentler and 
more kindly, affected women's lot in many ways for the 
better, yet it assisted in keeping them in lower position 
than men. Through the first woman, it was said, came 
sin; and, from her, death and the fall of man. The curse 
of Eve was on all women: they were less than men; they 
should be obedient to their husbands. Accordingly, the 
Church had given them an honorable but inferior position, 
though this was counterbalanced by veneration of the 
mother of Christ. The monks and the hermits, at one 
time so powerful, taught that women were sinful creatures 
to be avoided. Through all these ages down to recent times 
certain circumstances pertaining to women combined with 
prevailing conditions of society to influence ideas about 
them. They were less strong than men: they needed 
men's protection; this was purchased by obedience and 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



63 



submission. Down to the time of the Industrial Revolu- 
tion most of women's work was always done in the home, 
under the control and supervision of men, whose authority 
was recognized by law. It was not often possible for an 
unmarried woman to have a business of her own, or find 
work outside the home; and there she worked under the 
direction of some male relative or some man who gave her 
support. Englishmen believed that their women were 
better off than those of any other country, but in Eng- 
land unmarried women had a legal position less good than 
men's, while married women, the great majority of the 
sex, had no legal existence separate from the husbands', of 
whom they were considered a part. The husband was 
responsible for the wife, and had entire authority over her. 
At the time of marriage the husband became owner of 
the wife's property, and when children were born they 
were legally his. Generally women were not supposed to 
possess any learning except what pertained to home 
duties. They were advised not to display such education 
as they had, since learning in women was thought un- 
womanly and improper, and apt to be disliked by the men. 
Generally families were larger then than now, and a great 
part of all the mental and physical energy of most women 
was given to the bearing and raising of children. 

From time immemorial had these things been, but now 
a great transformation was taking place. Many things 
contributed to effect this change. The grand ideas of the 
French Revolution were gradually considered to pertain 
to women as well as to men. In the nineteenth century 
several causes brought it about that greater sympathy and 
humanitarianism developed than ever before. The rapid 
advance of men was being shared by women. "Unless 
women are raised to the level of men, men will be pulled 
down to theirs," said John Stuart Mill in 1866. In course of 
time women as well as men obtained education, and from 
it came deepening of intellect and broadening of mind, 



Subordina- 
tion to men 



Betterment 
of women's 
position 



64 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Some 
economic 
independ- 
ence 



Greater pro^- 
duction and 
more leisure 



greater sense of dignity and worth, and inevitably larger 
power. Finally, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, 
much of the work formerly done in the home — spinning, 
weaving, making clothes, preserving food, and even pre- 
paring it to be eaten — was taken away to be done by factory 
workers. To the factories women followed this work, of 
which previously the larger part had always been done 
by themselves; and there they worked for wages, which, 
after a while, they kept and considered as their own. In 
this way came the beginning of some economic independ- 
ence. Furthermore, the Industrial Revolution, as will 
be shown, made possible a larger amount of leisure than 
ever before, especially for women. The greater material 
prosperity and the higher standard of living in conse- 
quence often brought it about that families were smaller 
than before. By 1870 women were at the threshold of a 
new era, which in some respects would be preeminently 
a Woman's Age. 

Finally the industrial changes of the nineteenth cen- 
tury created a different standard of living and a higher 
material civilization for a great many people. In earlier 
times there had often been much comfortable, even 
splendid, living, with a great deal of beauty and grace; 
but most of the population had no share in it, and never 
could hope to have. There were then wanting many 
things now taken as a matter of course. However much 
most people strove they could not hope to get a large 
amount of such things as then existed, for working alone 
in their homes, with hands or simple appliances, without 
machinery, with little cooperation and division of labor, 
it was not possible ever to produce much more than was 
needed by most people for mere subsistence. So it had 
been in ancient times, when only a minority enjoyed luxury 
and fine living through the labor of a multitude of slaves. 
So it was through medieval and modern times, when only 
the aristocracy and a few prosperous people had these 



INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



65 



things. But with the coming of the great factories and 
machines of the Industrial Revohition it was possible to 
produce easily much greater quantities of things than had 
ever been obtained before, so that more people might have 
them; and this increased production had to do also with 
many new articles which were now invented. Accord- 
ingly, while at first numerous laborers were thrown out of 
work, and while the condition of the workers was often 
very bad, yet it was presently evident that the new system 
yielded far greater output, and that now the mass of the 
people might get things formerly possessed only by the 
wealthy. Furthermore, the machines doing the work of 
many men made it possible for an increasing number of 
people to work less for the obtaining of what they wanted, 
with the result that leisure, time free from the toil neces- 
sary for existence, became the possession of a larger number 
of people than ever before. This leisure was devoted by 
some of the fortunate to improving their education and still 
further advancing their civilization. 



More neces- 
saries and 
many new 
things pro- 
duced 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

For the great inventions and changes: A. R. Wallace, The 
Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures (1898), a very 
stimulating brief account, The Progress of the Century (1901), 
by the same author and many others. Also James Samuelson 
(editor). The Civilisation of Our Day (1896), containing essays 
by various specialists; E. W. Byrn, The Progress of Invention 
in the Nineteenth Century (1900). 

For the history of industry and the old systems in general: 
Johannes Conrad, Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaft, 8 vols. 
(3d ed. 1909-11); R. H. I. Palgrave, Dictionary of Political 
Economy, 3 vols. (1910-13); Benjamin Rand, Selections Illustrat- 
ing Economic History Since the Seven Years' War (5th ed. 1911). 
Also W, W. Cunningham, The Groivth of English Industry and 
Commerce in Modern Times, 3 vols. (5th ed. 1910-12). 

The Industrial Revolution: D. H. Macgregor, The Evol dion 
of Industry (1912); H, de B. Gibbins, Economic and Industrial 
Progress of the Century (1903) excellent; Paul Mantoux, La 



66 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

RSvolution Industrielle au XVIIF Siecle (1906), best account of 
the Industrial Revolution. 

In England : G. H. Ferris, The Industrial History of Modern 
England (1914); Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial 
Revolution of the 18th Century in England (1884), the classic 
exposition in English; A. P. Usher, An Introduction to the Indus- 
trial History of England (1920); G. T. Warner, Landmarks in 
English Industrial History (11th ed. 1912). 

The new system: J. A. Hobson, The Evolution of Modern 
Capitalism: a Study of Machine Production (ed. 1912), excellent; 
Charles Gide and Charles Rist, Histoire des Doctrines Economi- 
ques depuis les Physiocrates jusqud Nos Jours (1919), trans. 
A History of Economic Doctrines (1915); Werner Sombart, Der 
Moderne Capitalismus, 2 vols. (1902). 

Condition and progress of the laboring classes : Louis Blanc, 
Histoire des Dix Ans, 1830-18^0, trans. History of Ten Years, 
1830-1840, 2 vols. (1844-5) ; Friedrich Engels, The Condition of 
the Working Class in England in 18J^4 (ed. 1892); Octave Festy, 
Le Mouvement Ouvrier au Debut de la Monarchic de Juillet, 2 vols. 
(1908); R. G. Gammage, History of Chartism (1854, new ed. 
1894), the author was a leader in the movement; Mark Ho veil, 
The Chartist Movement (1918), the best account; E. Levasseur, 
Histoire des Classes Ouvrieres et de Vlndustrie en France de 1789 
a 1870, 2 vols. (1903); J. A. R. Marriott, editor, The French 
Revolution in 184-8 in Its Economic Aspects, 2 vols. (1913); 
James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia, 2 vols. (1914). 



CHAPTER IV 

CERTAIN INTELLECTUAL AND 
SOCIAL CHANGES 

Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book . . . pietists . . . 
decry it . . . bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; 
old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and 
even savants . . . quote antiquated writers to show that its 
author is no better than an ape himself. . . . 
T. H. Huxley, "The Origin of the Species" (1860). 

In England ist der Umwalzungsprocess mit Handen greifbar . . 
in Deutschland, Frankreich, kurz alien Kulturstaaten des europa- 
ischen Kontinents, eine Umwandlung der bestehenden Verhaltnisse 
von Kapital und Arbeit ebenso fuhlbar und ebenso imvermeidlich 
ist als in England. 
Karl Marx, preface to Das Kajntal (1867). 

Romanum pontificem, cum ex cathedra loquitur, id est, cum omnium 
christianorum pastoris et doctoris munere fungens pro suprema sua 
apostolica auctoritate doctrinam de fide vel moribus ab universa 
ecclesia tenendam definit, per assistentiam divinam, ipsi in beato 
Petro promissam, ea infallibilitate pollere, qua divinus redemptor 
ecclesiam suam in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus instruc- 
tam esse voluit. 

Concilium Vaticanum: "De Romani pontificis infallibili 
magisterio" (July 18, 1870). 

During the hundred years or more from the middle Intellectual 
of the eighteenth century great changes took place which changes 
profoundly altered men's ideas about themselves, about 
the world around them, their conception of the Church, 
of the State, of the relations of men one with another, and 
of the organization of society; so that by 1870, and es- 
pecially in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a 
vast alteration was apparent. During this time came 
not only the French Revolution and the Industrial Revo- 

67 



68 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



New 
conditions 



The uni- 
verse 



Changing 
conceptions 
of the 
cosmos 



liition, but from them socialism took its rise, while the 
doctrine of evolution and the spread of scientific thinking 
brought large change in methods of thought and in intel- 
lectual outlook. 

The new inventions and the new industrial organization 
were making it possible to produce more of the necessaries 
and of the desirable things of life than in the past, with 
much less of human labor. Gradually a considerable 
part of all tiie population had more time to spare from 
work to devote to the enjoyment of life and the considera- 
tion of various things. Hence it was possible for more 
people than previously to be aware of intellectual changes, 
and by them to be more affected. 

During this period came completely altered conception 
of mankind and the world, of their origin, their progress, 
and their development. For a long time before, indeed, 
had such a change been in progress. After the second 
century of the Christian Era it had generally been con- 
sidered that the earth was the center of the universe. 
Above were the heavens, containing sun, moon, and 
stars, relatively small and in the firmament at no great 
distance above the earth. In accordance with this con- 
ception Dante in the Divina Commedia explained the 
position of heaven, purgatory, and hell, and thus even 
INIilton during the seventeenth century, in his Paradise 
Lost, conceived the structure and parts of the universe. 
According to this belief the sun, the moon, and the stars 
all considered relatively unimportant and sub- 



were 



sidiary to the earth. The world and mankind therein 
were the center of things, the beginning and end of creation. 
A change began when Copernicus, a Prussian, in 1543 
published his book, De orbium ccelestium revolutionihus 
(concerning the movements of the heavenly bodies), in 
which he asserted that the sun was the center of the 
universe, and the earth only one of the bodies which 
revolved about it. At the beginning of the seventeenth 




4. EUROPE: SHOWING RAILROA] 




^ALS, AND PRINCIPAL RIVERS 



CHANGES 



69 



century his teachings were confirmed and extended by the 
German, Kepler, and slowly the results were accepted. 
When this took place it was no longer possible to attach 
either to men or their world such immense importance as 
before. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 
conceptions of the universe altered still more with the pro- 
gress of astronomy and other sciences. Mathematics was 
developed, delicate instruments were perfected, telescopes 
became ever more powerful, and spectrum analysis was 
brought into service, with the result that further discover- 
ies were made which more completely altered ideas. At 
the end of the eighteenth century men thought of the sun 
as the center of a universe, with planets and attendant 
satellites revolving about it, and so vast was this universe 
that the outermost planet, Neptune, revolved at a distance 
of 2,800,000,000 miles. Slowly during the nineteenth 
century was knowledge of the heavens advanced, until 
this solar universe seemed small and but a little part of 
all things. By the beginning of the twentieth century 
distances had become so vast that they were measured 
now only by the "light year," the distance that light, 
travelling 186,000 miles a second, would traverse in a 
year. From the earth to the sun, light would go in eight 
minutes, but it would take four years for the passage to the 
nearest fixed star, and myriads or millions of years to 
reach another nebula like the Milky Way, of which perhaps 
the sun and its system are a part. 

Along wath this idea of the diminishing importance 
of the earth came another great change in thought. In 
early times, and especially since the rise of Christianity, 
it had been taught that the heavens and the earth and all 
the things they contained were created by God in six days; 
and it was believed that as they had suddenly been made 
in the beginning, so they had continued, essentially 
unchanged. Things had been designed for a purpose; 
that purpose continued to be. Men and women must 



The earth 
smaller, not 
the center 
of things 



Creation 



70 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



accept the conditions around them by which they were 
ruled. "In the beginning," said the Genesis of Scrip- 
tures, "God created the heaven and the earth . . . 
man in his own image. . . . Thus the heavens and 
the earth were finished." Literal belief in these precepts 
was fundamental. Many a reader of the Bible studied 
the chronology which it contained, laboriously estimating 
the years which had elapsed since Creation. About the 
middle of the seventeenth century Archbishop Usher, of 
the Anglican Church in Ireland, declared that Creation had 
taken place 4,004 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. 
Thus, according to current ideas, the life of man and of 
the world was but short, just as the universe was little. 
Altered These conceptions also were changed for many people 

conception during the course of the nineteenth century by the ad- 
vance of science and the formulation of the doctrine of 
evolution until it became increasingly doubtful to many 
whether the universe and all it contained had been made 
suddenly and primarily with reference to man. The 
very idea of creation, or a sudden making of things, was 
slowly displaced by the belief that things had evolved out 
of other things slowly, through long process of time. 
Evolution The doctrine of evolution was not new, for it went back 

at least to the time of some of the Greek philosophers, 
from whom it had been taken to be grandly stated by 
Lucretius in his De Natura Rerum. In 1749 the great 
French naturalist, Buffon, began the publication of his 
Histoire Naturelle, in which he declared that environment 
altered animals, and suggested that both men and apes 
might have developed from a common ancestor long be- 
fore. At the end of the eighteenth century James Hutton, 
a Scottish geologist, showed how changes in the earth's 
surface had been made, and declared that he could "find 
no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end. " About 
this time also the doctrine of development and slow change 
was advanced by the French astronomer and mathema- 



natural 



CHANGES 71 

tician, Laplace, who undertook in his Nebular Hypothesis 
to explain the development of the solar system. 

It was in the first half of the nineteenth century, how- Geology: 
ever, that contributions were made which caused the Lyell 
doctrine to revolutionize thinking. In 1830 Sir Charles 
Lyell began the publication of his Principles of Geology, 
in which he showed how earth features had developed 
and were everywhere developing still. Later on he de- 
clared that remains of primitive man were found under 
some of the later strata of the earth's surface, and esti- 
mated that men had lived in the world for 50,000 or 
100,000 years. Later authorities believed that man 
might have existed for 1,000,000 years, and that the 
years of the age of the earth might be 200,000,000. 

Most important of all, however, was the work of the Darwin: 
English naturalist, Charles Darwin. Influenced by Lyell's 
teaching of slow development, and also by the doctrine 
of the English economist Malthus, that increase of living 
things depended on their supply of food, he made a long 
and careful study of animals and plants. In 1859 he 
published his work. On the Origin of Species by Means 
of Natural Selection, and twelve years later his other work, 
The Descent of Man. In these writings he taught that there 
had been a long, slow development of things, an evolution 
of one type from another; that the changes in this evolution 
had been brought about as the result of a struggle for 
survival, in which some individuals or species had sur- 
vived because of peculiarities which especially fitted them 
to succeed or survive, and that these peculiarities increas- 
ing in course of time had constituted the changes of 
evolution, and brought about variation of species. There 
had been a long descent of species in which man could be 
traced back through the ape families to lower forms more 
distant and remote in time. Meanwhile, a younger scien- 
tist, A. R. Wallace, had independently reached the same 
conclusions. 



72 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Spread of 
the doctrine 
of evolution 



Evolution 

and 

religion 



The sober writings of Darwin, from the naiiire of their 
substance very difficult to comprehend, could have no 
wide circle of understanding readers, but in consequence 
of his work the idea of evolution attracted great attention. 
Among English-speaking people it was expounded by 
Thomas Huxley with such brilliancy and complete clear- 
ness that the educated layman understood it. Presently 
the doctrine became the most important new intellectual 
force of the time. Herbert Spencer in England undertook 
to explain all branches of knowledge in terms of evolution. 
By 1870 a bitter controversy was raging, in which clergy- 
men and conservatives heaped upon the hypothesis their 
obloquy, denunciation, and ridicule. In course of time, 
however, it was generally accepted among educated peo- 
ple, and though afterward modified in important particu- 
lars, it was in the end recognized as one of the very bases 
of modern thought. 

The results of all this were enormous. The conceptions 
of scholars and learned men were fundamentally changed, 
and religious ideas soon affected. The Bible had seemed 
to make it certain that the earth was created in six days; 
now geologists were teaching that the world had been 
slowly evolving for 100,000,000 years. Hitherto most 
people had believed that man had existed for about 6,000 
years; now geologists asserted that he had been on the 
earth for more than 100,000. For ages had it been taught 
that "God created man in his own image, in the image of 
God created he him"; now many declared that human 
beings had gradually been evolved from lower animals, 
these from reptiles, they from fishes, and so on back to 
the lowest forms in primeval times. It was therefore 
a generation of unhappiness and stress to many pious and 
thoughtful people, who were yet struck by the apparent 
truth of the new assertions which were being taught; 
they felt that the basis of their faith was being shaken 
since they had taken all the Bible as inspired and all its 



CHANGES 



73 



contents to be literalh' true. By 1870 a painful conflict 
was going on between science and religion, which con- 
tinued long after. In this conflict evolutionists and men 
of science were held up as atheists and blasphemers, while 
they heaped scorn on the ignorance of their opponents. 
As the century slowly progressed many people were able 
to adjust their beliefs and modify their conceptions, so 
that religion and science were reconciled for them. 

Meanwhile, innovation no less profound was taking place 
concerning ideas of social and economic arrangement. 
To the humane French philosophers of the latter part of 
the eighteenth century the world had seemed full of 
abuses, and they had stated the means by which men 
could be given their natural equality and the happiness 
which ought to be their due; these doctrines had been re- 
stated in the French Revolution, and attempt made to 
carry them into eifect. Hence had come civil equality. 
But the radical reformers of the Revolution had clearly 
perceived that the better state which they hoped for could 
never be attained unless economic equality came also. 
Presently the effects of the Industrial Revolution were 
apparent, and economic inequalities appeared still more 
striking. To remedy these conditions old doctrines were 
restated so strikingly that they have never since failed of 
attention. 

The ideas now known as socialism did not originate in 
the nineteenth century, but in some form can be traced 
back very far. Plato, who perceived the inequalities of 
his time, and who declared that in every city there were 
two great groups, the few who had, and the many who did 
not have, always at war with each other, described in his 
Republic an ideal state in which there should be community 
of goods and all fare alike. Others before him had dreamed 
of this, and the idea was handed on down. When Chris- 
tianity was established something of communism was 
adopted. " If thou wilt be perfect," said Jesus to a certain 



Socialism 



Communist 
ideas in 
earlier times 



74 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



In the 
Church 



Communism 
in the 
French 
Revolution 



one, "go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." 
Holding of property in common for all the members came 
to be the rule of organization in the early Church as it 
was in the later monastic societies; but as time went on it 
was not retained in the general organization of the Catholic 
Church. In 1360 John Ball and others preached to Eng- 
lish villeins that in the beginning all men were equal and 
that serfdom ought to be abolished. The doctrine of 
communism was again memorably stated in the sixteenth 
century by the Englishman, Sir Thomas More, who de- 
scribed the blessed country of Utopia where community of 
goods prevailed. During the period of the Reformation 
there was some attempt to realize this, especially in 
places where the Anabaptists were in control. During the 
seventeenth century in England certain Levellers arose 
to preach that all men should have equal position. In the 
eighteenth century French philosophic writers again ex- 
pounded the doctrine. In 1748 Montesquieu recalled the 
communism of the Republic of Plato, declared that the 
rich obtained their wealth by taking from others, suggested 
that the State should divide great fortunes, and asserted 
that in return for their labor the State owed food, cloth- 
ing, and a healthful living to all of its citizens. Rousseau, 
who learned much from Montesquieu, asserted in his 
Discourse Concerning Inequality among Men (1754) that in 
the state of nature, before the time of private property, 
all men were free and held the property in common. 

In the French Revolution the disciples of Rousseau and 
his fellows, both Girondins and Jacobins, held similar ideas; 
and, though these ideas had almost no actual result, yet 
during the most extreme part of the Revolution some at- 
tempt was made to put them into effect. One of the 
Girondists asserted that equality would come only if 
fortunes were equally divided by law, and if laws were 
passed to prevent inequalities in the future. In 1792 
Robespierre declared that property held in common by all 



CHANGES 



75 



of society was indispensable. "The French Revolution," 
said Sylvain Marechal in 1796, in his Manifeste des Egaux 
(Proclamation of Equals), "is but the forerunner of an- 
other revolution much greater . . . which will be 
the last ... we move forward to something more 
sublime and just, the common weal and community of 
goods. No more private ownership of land, the land be- 
longs to no one." By this time reaction was already 
under way, and the bourgeois Directory was in control. 
Against this government Babeuf, who had asserted belief 
in complete equality and community of property, headed 
a conspiracy in 1796. His scheme, which at once came 
to naught with his capture and execution, had been the 
establishment of a state in which private property should 
not exist, and in which the commonwealth, holding all 
property, should direct all the work of its citizens, dividing 
their tasks among them, and, if necessary, compelling men 
to do the work assigned. Actually, the course of the 
Revolution brought it about that private property in 
France presently came to be divided among a larger num- 
ber of proprietors than before. From France communistic 
doctrines had spread over into England, but no substantial 
results were apparent. 

For the most part the communistic theories of the Old 
Regime and the Revolution had to do with landed prop- 
erty, but during the first half of the nineteenth century 
the Industrial Revolution produced in western Europe 
such large results, such power and wealth in the hands of 
capitalists and factory owners, and made so evident the 
lowly dependence of a multitude of workers, that again the 
ideas of better arrangement of wealth and of regulation 
by the State were taken up. They were directed now 
more against the bourgeoisie. In France the sale on easy 
terms to the peasants of the lands of the nobles and the 
Church was bringing to the mass of the people better 
chance than the people of any nation ever before had had. 



Economic 
equality 
by law 



The In- 
dustrial 
Revolution 



76 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Socialism in 
England 



In France 



But in Great Britain, and also in lands near by, the In- 
dustrial Revolution was now creating a new proletariat, 
for whom other measures were needed. 

In England, where industrial change had been greatest, 
came the first important development in this period. 
Early in the nineteenth century Robert Owen, a Scotch- 
man, developed at New Lanark a model factory com- 
munity, where the workers shared in the profits of their 
labors. He believed that it would be possible for in- 
dustrial and agricultural life everywhere to be so arranged. 
The enterprise at New Lanark was very successful, but 
attempts to set up similar communities elsewhere usually 
failed. It was generally found that a leader with the 
enterprise and the skill necessary to win such success 
would only work for himself, while the workers, much 
pleased to share in the profits, were unwilling or unable 
to assume any part of the losses. Later on, however, 
cooperative enterprises and stores were established, not 
only in Great Britain but elsewhere. Owen himself went 
beyond his undertaking at New Lanark, constantly inter- 
esting himself in assisting the poorer classes and reforming 
society. He tried to establish various communities in 
which property and interests should be in common. He 
was afterward regarded as the founder of socialism in 
England. Indeed, it was in connection with his efforts 
that the term "socialism" arose. He himself may have 
employed it, but as early as 1835 one of his disciples is 
known to have used the word "socialist" {socius, comrade 
or ally). In the following years socialism permeated the 
ideals of the Chartist reformers, but died down with the 
failure of their schemes. 

During this time the Industrial Revolution was develop- 
ing also in France, where factories, slums, proletariat, all 
attracted increasing attention. Thoughtful and humane 
men began to advocate fundamental reform, going back 
to the ideas of Rousseau, Robespierre, and Babeuf . Saint- 



CHANGES 



77 



Simon, later on regarded as the founder of French 
socialism, who developed his ideas especially in the years 
1817-1825, proposed that all property should be owned 
by the State, that inheritance should be abolished, and that 
industry should be regulated by men of science. Fourier 
believed that reform should be made through establish- 
ing industrial communities, in which the profits would be 
divided among capital, labor, and talent. Somewhat 
later appeared Louis Blanc, who published his Organisa- 
tion du Travail (Organization of Labor) in 1839. He 
condemned industrial competition, and taught that the 
State should institute "social" workshops, in which the 
workmen should choose their managers and divide the 
gains. \Mien the Revolution of 1848 suddenly broke out 
in Paris, the socialists were for the moment so strong that 
Blanc and other leaders became members of the provisional 
government established. Socialism had for some time 
been growing among the masses in French cities, and 
radical reforms had been asked for. Blanc and his as- 
sociates were now ranged with the republicans, since they 
believed that the establishment of a republic would bring 
best chance of obtaining the social reforms which they 
wished for. He declared that private property ought 
to be replaced by public, that everyone should have 
opportunity to work, and that industry should be con- 
trolled not under capitalists but in cooperative societies 
under the workmen therein engaged. 

The great majority of the people of France were op- 
posed to such schemes then as later, but something was 
accomplished for the moment. A commission was es- 
tablished under Blanc to consider the reforms which 
socialists wanted. Blanc had advocated cooperative work- 
shops, for which, at the beginning, the necessary capital 
was to be advanced by the State, and in which the enter- 
prise would be controlled by the workmen — something 
like what the syndicalists desired sixty years later. But 



Saint-Simon 



Louis Blanc 
in 1848 



78 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Ateliers 
Nationaux 



Decline of 
the older 
socialism 



while his commission dehberated about various measures 
— a ten-hour working day, assistance for workmen, and 
better conditions for them — the government put into opera- 
tion a scheme resembling what he had urged, but in char- 
acter actually quite different, and something he would 
never have approved. National Workshops {Ateliers 
Nationaux) were set up, in which the State was to be the 
employer. This was, indeed, nothing more than a gigantic 
system of poor relief, for men were put to work, irrespec- 
tive of their training, at digging and then filling up the 
holes, and at similar tasks, the State paying them the uni- 
form wage of two francs a day. Many applied for this 
work, there was not enough to go around, and great 
confusion and dissatisfaction arose. The entire scheme, 
with which the authorities associated Blanc's name, in- 
curred disrepute, and when the government, now con- 
trolled by the bourgeoisie, felt itself stronger, the National 
Workshops were abolished. Then the socialist and radical 
workingmen of Paris rose in furious revolt. After terrible 
street fighting they were completely crushed, and in 1848 
as in 1796 the bourgeoisie remained completely triumphant. 
Thus it is evident that ideas of socialism or communism, 
even more than the doctrine of evolution, had had a long 
development before the middle of the nineteenth century, 
and that many thinkers who contributed to its teachings 
continued to influence men after this time. But by 1848 
the socialism of Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, and their 
followers was visibly sunk in decay; their efforts had 
failed, and it was apparent that their teachings had not 
produced the results they hoped for. Chartism in Eng- 
land was dying out. The schemes of Louis Blanc had 
failed in Paris. After 1840 many radical workmen had 
lost faith in the doctrines of these teachers, and some 
of them began to believe that reforms by the government, 
and remedies brought by philanthropists or conducted 
by "men of science" would help them little. The better- 



CHANGES 



79 



ment of the condition of the proletariat, it was said, must 
come through the efforts of itself. The doctrines which 
such men held vaguely and not yet well defined had to 
some extent been stated by the German, Wilhelm Weit- 
ling, and by the Frenchman, Etienne Cabet who in 1840 
published his Voyage en Icarie, a philosophic romance 
which described the communism of an ideal state. Pres- 
ently German refugees, followers of this workingmen's 
movement, founded the Communist League, a secret 
society, with headquarters in London. It was at this 
point that Marx, the great expounder of modern socialist 
doctrines, appeared. 

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was of Jewish descent, and 
came of a middle-class family in Rhenish Prussia. He 
was destined for the law, but his own inclinations carried 
him to philosophy and historical studies. He was at 
first a liberal bourgeois, in the days of political repression 
in Germany before the Revolution of 1848, Soon he found 
it expedient to leave the country. In 1843 he went to 
Paris. There he met Friedrich Engels, his companion and 
co-worker thereafter. Through study of the teachings 
of Robert Owen, and through acquaintance with Louis 
Blanc in Paris, Marx became a social reformer and an 
advocate of the workingman's cause. In 1847 Marx and 
Engels attended a meeting of the Communist League 
held in London. The views which they there stated made 
much impression, and they were asked to draw up a work- 
ing programme for the League. This they did, and in 1848 
appeared the Communist Manifesto, a small pamphlet 
containing in brief form their socialist doctrines. "Let 
the ruling classes tremble," they said. "Workmen of all 
lands, unite." In 1849 Marx, having returned to Prussia, 
was expelled from the country. Presently along with his 
wife he took refuge in London, and remained in England 
till his death. During these long years, in the midst of 
poverty, discouragement, and meager living, sustained by 



New 
teachings 



Karl Marx 



Comnnunist 
Manifesto 



80 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Finds refuge 
in England 



Influence 
of Marx 



His writings 



the devotion of his wife and the sympathy of followers and 
friends, haunting, as many a scholar since has done, the 
round room of the British Museum in quest of materials 
for research, writing in his rooms, often in the midst of 
the children whom he loved, shouting, tumbling, harness- 
ing him as he wrote and whipping him in the midst of 
laughter and shouts, he composed his profound and exten- 
sive studies which constitute a landmark in the develop- 
ment of historical and economic writing. His chief work, 
Das Kapital (Capital), was published in 1867. 

In 1862 Marx took the lead in founding the Interna- 
tional Working Men's Association, often known as the 
Internationale, which brought together in one organization 
the communist organizations of different countries. 
National feelings were ever growing stronger, despite the 
new economic teachings, and it was found impossible to 
hold together the workmen of all countries in one body, 
so that the Association soon broke down, though interna- 
tional meetings came together from time to time later on. 
By 1870 belief in communism had made considerable 
progress, though in the next year it received a decisive 
setback in the collapse of the Commune of Paris, which 
Marx had approved. But communism, or socialism, as it 
was called again later on, had received vast impetus and 
new meaning from the teachings of Engels and Marx. 
Everywhere the Communist Manifesto had attracted atten- 
tion. Das Kapital had not directly influenced many, but 
the ideas of the master were being reduced to simple 
form, popularized and spread broadcast, as new teachings 
and great doctrines usually are, by numerous disciples 
who proclaimed them again and again. In another genera- 
tion they had become mighty factors in the intellectual 
and economic life of the world; and when the century 
ended, it was seen that the teachings of Marx — like the 
exhortations of Luther and Calvin, like the theories of 
Rousseau, like the doctrine of evolution taught by Dar- 



CHANGES 



81 



win — had profoundly affected the minds of great numbers 
of men. 

According to Marx there had always been a few at the 
top ruling and exploiting the many beneath them. Be- 
tween the two groups there had been a struggle from of 
old. In ancient times the contest was between masters 
and slaves; slavery had gradually disappeared, but then 
society was divided into the lords above and the great body 
of the serfs beneath them; gradually serfdom had dis- 
appeared in most places, as nobles and lords lost their 
power, but from the ruins of feudal society had come the 
modern bourgeois society, and the age-long struggle was 
still being fought out between capitalists and industrial 
workers. "Society as a whole," said the Communist 
Manifesto, "is more and more splitting up into two great 
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each 
other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." In the end the 
upper class, the workingmen's enemy and master, would 
be completely overthrown. Now the workers toiled for 
their masters in factories and were huddled together in 
tenements and slums, but their number was great, and if 
they could unite with the workers in the country they 
might some day get the government within their control. 
Capital and wealth were held by a few ; they were destined 
to be concentrated in still fewer hands; then, finally, when 
the people had control, all would be taken over by the 
State for the people. Marx declared that upper-class 
capitalists largely owned as private property the wealth 
which had been created by the workers, and that with 
the destruction of the bourgeoisie and their organization, 
this would be brought to an end and capital be the com- 
mon property of the people. The Manifesto stated in 
simple form some of the measures which it was hoped 
would be ordained : abolition of property in land, all rents 
to be taken for the public; a heavy progressive or grad- 
uated income tax; abolition of inheritance; centralization 



Doctrines 
of Marx and 
Engels 



Struggle of 
classes 



82 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Socialist 
ideas 



Their char- 
acter 



of credit in the hands of the State, the State setting up a 
national bank with exclusive monopoly; all means of 
communication and transport to be centralized, controlled 
by the State; State ownership of factories and instruments 
of production; equal liability of all to labor — establish- 
ment of "industrial armies"; free education of all children 
in public schools, and abolition of children's factory labor. 
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and 
class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which 
the free development of each is the condition for the free 
development of all." "The proletarians," said the Mani- 
festo, "have nothing to lose but their chains. They have 
a world to win." 

It was the work of these communist teachers, and 
especially of Marx, to take the earlier socialist specula- 
tions, and give them firmer foundation and greater dis- 
tinctness. The doctrines of Marx were no mere abstrac- 
tions conceived in his own mind nor brilliant speculations 
based upon foundations which he merely assumed. For 
years he carried on tireless research in the past records 
of industrial history and development, and whether or not 
his deductions were correct, he deduced from his study 
of the past his interpretation of the present and prophecies 
for the future. His conclusion that all history recorded a 
struggle between classes was plausible enough, however 
true it may be. His prediction that the mass of the people 
would certainly control the governments of their states 
later on was in accord with the splendid dreams of the 
democracy then developing, which since his time have 
developed so much further still. His conclusion that 
under the control of the people communism would be 
established for the betterment of the lot of the people 
had for more than two thousand years been the dream of 
not a few philosophers who hoped to ameliorate the lot 
of mankind. His idea that the proletariats of the several 
countries had interests in common and should live together 



CHANGES 



83 



in amity and accord was but an aspect of the scheme 
which many noble spirits have cherished for the attainment 
of peace and things better. 

The ideas of Marx and other great socialists were carried 
further and sometimes perverted by rasher and more 
ardent spirits, whose declarations jSlled contemporaries 
with aversion and horror. Socialism soon came under 
the stigma of intending to break up the family, abolish 
marriage, bring community of women, divide all prop- 
erty equally, and do away with the Christian religion. 
There was good reason to think that if those who cher- 
ished these ideals could, they would bring them to pass 
by force through sudden overturning and revolution. 
Accordingly, socialism, like the doctrine of evolution, had 
to encounter not merely the conservative instinct of the 
time in which it appeared, but also the repugnance and 
dread of many who were frightened at radical wildness. 
For not all of this was Marx responsible. It should be 
remembered also that, whatever his mistakes, and some 
of them only time will determine, his motives were of the 
best. He was filled with a passionate humanity and 
desire to make the lot of his fellowmen better. "The 
poor always ye have with you," was the maxim which 
had come down through the ages; but these socialists con- 
ceived of poverty as a disease in the State, curable, and 
preventable, indeed, if the State were but organized better. 

By 1870 socialism had not achieved great results, and 
the Commune of Paris next year was to strike the people 
of Europe with horror. In the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century, however, increasingly would its influence 
grow. Many of the socialists themselves would gradually 
become less extreme, and expect to bring their reforms 
about slowly, in consequence of perception by most people 
that their doctrines were best. Some of their ideas in 
course of time would be adopted by governments them- 
selves and put into effect, for the most part, it would seem. 



More radical 
doctrines 



Criticism 
of socialist 
doctrines 



84 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Doubt con- 
cerning 
socialist 
.doctrines 



Religion 



The Greek 

Catholic 

Church 



for the better. Generally, however, their fundamental 
doctrine, that private property should be abolished and 
that all should be held by the State for the use of its 
people, would find slow acceptance. It would be possible 
to point out that communism had existed probably in 
every primitive society, and that if the history of man- 
kind extended over 100,000 years, perhaps much the 
greater part of this time had known the existence of com- 
munistic society. It was certain, however, that in the 
development of what most people conceived to be the 
better civilization of the more recent centuries, always 
common ownership had yielded to the system of private 
holding. Whether, then, communism was well adapted 
for advanced peoples, whether it could ever be put into 
operation for the welfare of the majority, in 1870 as in 
1920, was for most people hidden in doubt and the future. 

In the midst of vast revolutions thus going on in the 
realm of general ideas most people continued to hold 
to the philosophy and beliefs that had been handed 
down by their Church, In the past, religion had always 
been the greatest of intellectual forces affecting mankind, 
embodying science, philosophy, explanation of the pres- 
ent and hope for the future. In the Middle Ages the 
Christian Church, gradually taking the best of the past 
and the present, had become the most important of all the 
agents of civilization and progress. It had seldom been 
diflBcult for its ministers to hold the affection and ad- 
herence of their followers, though always the bold and 
speculative had struck out on new paths for themselves. 
Especially was this so now during the strange and won- 
drous time of the nineteenth century. During this time 
the three parts of Christianity in Europe met the changes 
about them with varying fortune. 

Least affected then and for a long time after was the 
Greek Catholic or Orthodox Church of the East, which 
counted among its adherents most of the Russians, the 



CHANGES 



85 



Greeks, and most of the South Slavs of the Balkan coun- 
try. This Church, largely controlled by the Russian 
Government and working in obedience to the tsar, had 
long gone forward unwavering in its course, with ancient 
ritual, and ceremonies of the past, little troubled by 
revolts from within and scarcely touched by influence 
from without. The Russian people were still off on one 
side of the Continent, outside the great currents that 
were steadily changing western and central Europe. Cen- 
sorship kept out the new books and prevented new teach- 
ings ; police suppressed all innovators or drove them away. 
Almost all the people were illiterate and simple. In 
Russia, accordingly, socialism as yet had no footing, and 
evolution was scarcely known of. The Russian Church 
thus remote continued to be generally followed and 
obeyed by the people, whose great teacher it remained, 
whose traditions it embodied, and whose national con- 
sciousness it fostered. Most of the Russian people were, 
as ever, simple-minded peasants, cherishing their ikons 
or images, crossing themselves devoutly as they passed 
by the shrines and the churches. 

Since the French Revolution the Roman Catholic 
Church had been passing through vicissitudes much 
greater. In several countries it had been deprived of its 
property; in 1860 most of the territory of the popes had 
been taken from them; they still held the city of Rome 
and a little district about it, though twice, in 1862 and 
1867, Garibaldi had tried to take this, and the papal 
tenure was now entirely dependent upon European politi- 
cal conditions. One of the popes had been carried off 
a prisoner by Napoleon. Furthermore, the populations 
of western and central Europe, in the midst of which this 
Church was established, were far more enlightened than 
those of the eastern lands. Its adherents were much 
in contact with the great changes in science and culture 
and much more affected by them, so that the western 



The Church 
of the Slavs 



The Roman 

Catholic 

Church 



86 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The French 
Revolution 
and Na- 
poleon 



Older condi- 
tions re- 
stored 



Church had again and again to encounter new ideas 
which threatened to undermine its power. 

The Roman CathoHc Church had been touched by the 
French Revolution much more than the Protestant 
Churches, for the effects of the Revolution were greater 
and lasted longer in Catholic countries. During the 
Revolution the lands of the Church had been confiscated 
in France. A little later, during the Terror, the extreme 
revolutionists suppressed the Christian religion, closed 
the churches, and proclaimed the worship of Reason. A 
reaction had, indeed, soon followed, and Napoleon, under- 
standing the sentiments of most of the people and their 
veneration for the faith of their fathers, had respected 
Christianity and given it the protection of the govern- 
ment. In 1801 he had made with Pius VII the famous 
Concordat or agreement; but he had soon come into 
conflict with this pope and cast him into prison. For a 
short time after 1809 Napoleon made good the ideal of the 
greatest medieval emperors; he considered himself to be 
head of the Empire and superior to the Church, with the 
pope subordinate and dependent. Not since the time 
of the Babylonian Captivity in the fourteenth century, 
when the popes resided at Avignon under the shadow of 
the power of France, had papal authority been so much 
lowered. 

All this came to an end with the fall of Napoleon; 
and after the Congress of Vienna the Church recovered. 
The ecclesiastical property confiscated in France was not 
restored, but the gifts of pious Catholics founded a new 
wealth for it. During this period of restoration and reac- 
tion people remembered that the Church had been at- 
tacked at the same time that so many other venerable 
institutions were overthrown; and the ruling class often 
believed that the worst excesses of the radicals and 
revolutionists could not have happened had not religion 
and the Church been abandoned. Accordingly, it was 



CHANGES 



87 



thought well that priests should have their old influence; 
education was placed in their hands; and they were sup- 
ported by the government, to which in turn they gave 
faithful assistance. 

It was presently seen, however, that it was not the 
violence of Hebert or Napoleon, but the continuing ideas 
of the French Revolution and those now brought about 
by the Industrial Revolution in process, the scientific 
advance, and the new ideas, that were dangerous to the 
old beliefs and to the temporal power of the Church. Civil 
and rehgious equality made people different from what 
they had been. SociaHsm was rising, and during the 
remainder of the century it had greater and greater effect 
upon the outlook of people in the lower as well as the upper 
classes. From the first the teachings of the socialists 
made men less inclined to follow without question the old 
doctrines cf the Churches. During all this time also 
great discoveries, strange inventions, and bold specula- 
tions laid the foundation for an entirely different way of 
looking at things, which made it impossible for some to 
believe any longer what their fathers had accepted with- 
out question. 

Among the great movements of this time none was 
more striking than the spread of education in the western 
half of Europe. Hence people were more easily brought 
to a knowledge of the great new doctrines and the wonder- 
ful experiments and discoveries that were taking place, 
and the alterations in human knowledge which followed. 
A different spirit had been developing since the eighteenth 
century and constantly spreading. More and more did 
people require reasons for what they were asked to believe, 
and demand proofs of what was submitted. Discover- 
ies in the realms of biology, chemistry, and physics ex- 
plained an immense number of things, and promised 
to explain many more. In course of time those who 
imderstood the writings of Lyell, Darwin, and Huxley 



Conflict 
with the 
new ideas 



Education 
and scienti- 
fic spirit 



88 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Science and 
religion in 
Catholic 
countries 



Scepticism 
and religious 
devotion 



came to conceive of things in terms of science where 
before they had as a matter of faith beheved what was 
taught. These people or their teachers began to subject 
even the Bible to "higher criticism," just as they would 
examine the texts of Shakespeare or Virgil; to investigate 
the history of religions just as they would search for the 
origins of feudalism or the rise of parliaments in the Mid- 
dle Ages; and in consequence they began to doubt or reject 
many things which the Church had said must be believed. 
All the Churches of western Europe had to encounter 
this spirit increasingly in the century after the French 
Revolution, and all of them were shaken by it. The 
Roman Catholic Church met the situation as it had met 
similar ones in the past. The doctrines it taught were to 
be considered divinely inspired and unalterably true. 
Circumstances in the world around might change and 
science bring revelation and discoveries, but always the 
teachings of the Church remained true as they had been 
from the first; and they were to be entirely accepted by the 
faithful. Accordingly, as the gap widened between what 
had been of old and what the effects of the French Revolu- 
tion were producing, between the old industrial system 
and the results of the Industrial Revolution, between the 
teachings of the fathers and hierarchs of the Church and 
the new ideas taught by the socialists, between the stories 
contained in the Bible and the conclusions of scientific 
scholars, Catholic populations remained divided in two 
parts, as, indeed, they had been in the eighteenth century 
when the enlightened sceptics were doing their work: 
many belonging to the upper intellectual classes with bet- 
ter education either [abandoned their religion or remained 
Catholics merely in name; the larger body of the poor, the 
humble, and the simple clung to priests and the Church as 
their fathers and their mothers before them, together with 
many of the cultured and learned, to whom the new knowl- 
edge seemed less good than the old. 



CHANGES 



89 



The Roman Catholic Church was far from remaining 
a passive spectator of the conflict going on around it. Gen- 
erally speaking, it supported the best of the old order and 
opposed revolutions and changes; it favored monarchies 
rather than the revolutionary republics which appeared; 
it opposed socialism and set itself sternly against "free 
thinking" or any attempt to compromise with the new 
knowledge by abandoning any part of the older faith. 

The authorities of the Church condemned the new 
socialist teachings completely. Generally the ecclesiastics 
of western Europe were against the ideas of Marx, but 
the most formidable opposition came from the Roman 
Catholic Church. In 1864 Pope Pius IX denounced 
socialism and communism in the Syllabus of Errors. 
Churchmen, remembering the extremities of the French 
Revolution, and considering some of the teachings of the 
socialist leaders, believed that communism aimed at the 
overthrow of Christianity altogether. Socialists looked 
upon the churches, and especially the Roman Catholic 
Church, as great established interests, founded upon the 
old system and identified with its fortunes, and hence 
great obstacles in the way of alteration for the better. 

Against all other innovations the Church spoke no less 
strongly. In 1864 Pius IX issued the encyclical (circular 
letter) Quanta Cur a at the same time with the Syllabus 
(summary) of Errors. Here he rigidly upheld all the old 
contentions of the Church, and condemned all who tended 
toward free thinking, religious liberty, or any diminution 
of the authority of the Church by abolishing ecclesiastical 
courts, by making the clergy less subordinate to Rome, 
by establishing lay marriage, and putting education under 
laymen's control. Nor was this all. In 1854 the Pope 
had promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Con- 
ception of the Virgin, Mary. In December, 1869, was 
assembled an ecumenical council of the Church at Rome, 
the first which had been brought together since the 



Attitude 
of the 
Church 



Socialism 
opposed 



The Sylla- 
bus of 
Errors 



90 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Vatican 

Council, 

1869-70 



The Prot- 
estant 
Churches 



Council of Trent concluded its sessions in 1563. At 
this Council of the Vatican proposals were made to 
affirm the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Popes. 
This was so counter to the tendencies of the age, in 
which philosophy and science were making many people 
increasingly doubtful about the absolute truth of any- 
thing, that many Catholics were strongly opposed to it, 
and at first only a minority in the Council could be brought 
to support it. Through skilful management, however, 
and largely because of pressure and persuasion from the 
pope, the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was affirmed; 
that is to say, that the pope, speaking ex cathedra (as pope) 
with respect to affairs of the Church, could not err. Even 
after the work of the Council was done, some Catholics 
refused to accept the doctrine newly proclaimed; but in so 
far as they remained in the Church, after a while they were 
forced to yield. Thus in 1870 the Church was presenting 
to the world a front unchanged and unchanging; but 
circumstances around it were altering more swiftly than 
ever before. 

The Protestant Churches during this period were con- 
fronted with many of these same problems, but there is 
less to be said about them, since no one of them presented 
so striking or powerful an organization as either the 
Greek Catholic or the Roman Catholic Church. The 
Protestant creeds were professed in some of the greatest 
countries of Europe, but the character and the organiza- 
tion of their Churches was such that they could not play 
the large part in politics and international relations taken 
by the Papal See. The circumstances of the Reformation 
had brought it about that when the Protestant Churches 
were established, they were put under the control of the 
State, and after that time the Anglican Church in Eng- 
land and the Lutheran Church in Prussia had remained 
great and wealthy, but usually passive and obedient in 
their established position. 



CHANGES 



91 



During the nineteenth century they strove, like the 
Cathohc Church, to hold to the privileges and the teach- 
ings they had long maintained. They also had to meet the 
changes in life and thought that arose all during this 
time, and their adherents also were often torn by struggle 
between the old beliefs and the new revelations of science. 
But notwithstanding that many Protestant ministers 
regarded Darwin and Huxley as atheists and accursed, 
and the doctrines of Saint-Simon and Marx as dangerous 
and grounded in error, and notwithstanding that the 
Protestant Churches also regarded their own doctrines as 
unquestionably true and unchanging, yet in the case of 
Protestants it was often less difficult to reconcile science 
and new social doctrine with religion; for Protestantism, 
in spite of itself, had always conduced toward freedom 
of thought. The early Protestants had had no idea 
whatever of permitting intellectual or religious freedom, 
but they had broken away from the Roman Catholic 
Church; and what they had done others did more easily 
afterward. Not only had many new Protestant sects 
been founded, but within these sects individuals tended 
more and more to the belief that each person might be 
his own judge. A great many Protestants, therefore, 
were less under the authority of the heads of their Church, 
and more in the habit of judging for themselves. Ac- 
cordingly, after some struggle, many Protestants modi- 
fied their religious beliefs so as to bring them, as they 
thought, into conformity with the new teachings of 
philosophy and science, and in course of time a consider- 
able number of their ministers and leaders had been able 
to do this likewise. 



Conflict 
with the 
new teach- 
ings 



Freedom of 
thought 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Evolution: H. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin (1894), 
for a brief account of the development of the doctrine; G. F. 
Romanes, Darwin and After Darwin, 3 vols. (1906-10); Charles 



92 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection 
(1859), The Descent of Man (1871); Life and Letters of Charles 
Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin, 2 vols. (1887); Thomas H, 
Huxley, Collected Essays, 9 vols. (1893-4); James Marchant, 
Alfred Russel Wallace, Letters and Reminiscences, 2 vols. (1916). 

Rationalism and freedom of thought: A. W. Benn, A History 
of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (1906); 
J, T. Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth 
Century, 4 vols. (1896-1914), excellent; A. C. McGiffert, The 
Rise of Modern Religious Ideas (1915); J, M. Robertson, A Short 
History of Free Thought (3d ed. 1915). 

Socialism: R. C. K. Ensor, Modern Socialism, as Set Forth 
by Socialists in Their Speeches, Writings, and Programmes (3d 
ed. 1910), a convenient collection of sources. For general ref- 
erence: EncyclopSdie Socialiste (ed. by Compere-Morel), 8 vols. 
(1912-13) ; Josef Stammhammer, Bibliographic des Socialismus 
und Communisvuis, 3 vols. (1893-1909). M. Beer, Geschichte des 
Sozialismiis in England (1913), A History of British Socialism, 
2 vols. (1919-20), an improved English version by the author; 
Alfred Fouillee, Le Socialisme et la Sociologie RSformiste (1909); 
E. Fourniere, Les Theories Socialistes au XIX' Siecle, de Babeuf 
a Proudhon (1904) ; Morris Hillquit, Socialism in Theory and 
Practice (1909) ; Gaston Isambert, Les I dies Socialistes en France 
de 1815 a 1848 (1905); Thomas Kirkup, A History of Socialism 
(5th ed. 1913); J. R. Macdonald, Socialism and Government, 
2 vols. (1909), The Socialist Movement (1911); W. H. Mallock, 
A Critical Examination of Socialism (1907); O. D. Skelton, 
Socialism: a Critical Analysis (1911), excellent criticism of; 
John Spargo, Socialism: a Summary and Interpretation of 
Socialist Principles (ed. 1909). 

Socialist leaders and their writings: J. Tchernoff, Louis Blanc 
(1904); John Spargo, Karl Marx, His Life and Work (1910); 
Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867), trans, by S. Moore, E. B. 
Aveling, and E. Ilntermann, Capital, a Critique of Political 
Economy, 3 vols. (1907-9); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), numerous editions; 
Frank Podmore, Robert Owen, a Biography, 2 vols. (1906). 

Roman Catholicism: William Barry, The Papacy and Mod- 
dern Times (1911); Antonin Debidour, Histoire des Rapports de 
rEglise et de V^tat en France de 1789 a 1870 (1898); Pierre de 
la Gorce, Histoire Religieuse de la Revolution Frangaise, 3 vols. 
(1012-19); Joseph MacCaffrey, History of the Catholic Church in 



CHANGES 93 

the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (1910), by a Catholic Scholar; 
Fredrik Nielsen, trans, from the Danish by A. J. M.3iSon,History 
of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (1906), from the 
Lutheran point of view; Paul Pisani, UEglise de Paris et la Revolu- 
tion, 4 vols. (1908-11); G. Weill, Histoire du Catholicisme Liber- 
al en France, 1828-1908 (1909). A convenient and excellent 
collection of the sources is Carl Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte 
des Papsttums und des Romischen Katholizismus (3d ed. 1911). 
Protestantism: F. W. Cornish, A History of the Church of 
England in the Nineteenth Century (1910), best; H. W. Clark, 
History of English Nonconformity (1913). 



CHAPTER V 



The 
United 
Kingdom of 
Great Brit- 
ain and 
Ireland 



THE EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 

The prospects with which the year terminated were those of durable 
peace to this country, and of a general settlement of the afifairs of 
the continent. . . . There were, indeed, appearances which a 
boding mind might regard as presaging an interruption of the 
calm. . . 
Annual Register, Far the Year 1870, p. 1 (on the state of affairs 
at the end of the year 1869). 

Le peuple frangais est convoque. . . . pour accepter ou rejeter 

le projet de plebiscite suivant: "Le peuple approuve les reformes 

liberales operees dans la Constitution depuis 1860, par I'Emper- 

eur. ... 

Decree of Napoleon III, April 20, 1870: Emile Oluvier; VEmr 

pire Liberal, xiii. 332. 

Es ist in einem anderen Lande von amtlicher Stelle aus gesagt 
worden: der Friede Europas beruhe auf dem Degen Frank- 
reichs , . . aber dass . . . jeder Staat, dem seine Ehre 
und Unabhangigheit lieb ist, sich bewusst sein muss, dass sein 
Friede und seine Sicherheit auf seinem eigenen Degen beruht, — ich 
glaube, meine Herren, dariiber werden wir alle einig sein. 

Speech of Bismarck, May 22, 1869: Horst Kohl, Bismarck- 
Regesten (1891), i. 373. 

In 1870 the most powerful European state was the 
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, of which 
the important member was Great Britain, with England 
the principal part. Close as was the proximity of Britain 
to the European continent, important and constant as 
her relations with the rest of Europe necessarily were, her 
insular position continued, as during a long time in the 
past, to make her principal interests elsewhere. Before 
the period of her greatness England had been a small and 
unimportant country on the outskirts of Europe, though 

94 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 



95 



sometimes her excellent soldiery had won great victories 
in France. The fundamental change in trade routes and 
relative geographical position made the beginning of a 
great alteration in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies, during which time the English, through good 
fortune, through their enterprise and skill, and because 
their geographical position was now one of the best in the 
world, laid the foundations of a great colonial empire, 
and became the wealthiest trading nation in the world. 
This position they maintained in a series of successful wars 
with Spain, with Holland, and with France. In 1707 
England and Scotland were firmly and finally united. 
After the middle of the eighteenth century the Industrial 
Revolution, beginning in Britain, advanced there with 
gigantic strides, bringing much increase of wealth and 
power to the nation. In 1801 Ireland, previously con- 
quered and long held in dependence and subjection, was 
incorporated with Great Britain in the United Kingdom. 
During all this time the colonial dominions were extended, 
and although the best of the colonies had revolted and 
become independent, as the United States, yet all through 
the first half of the nineteenth century the British Empire 
continued to expand in wealth, in greatness, and in power. 
In the course of this development the principal inter- 
ests of Britain had been outside of Europe, over the 
oceans, in the dominions, and along the trade routes of the 
world. In European affairs usually she took as little part 
as she could. The wars with Spain and Holland and 
France were fought largely about colonies and trade. In 
general, it was the great purpose of Britain to maintain 
the Balance of Power in Europe, and prevent any state 
from obtaining such greatness as to be a danger to its 
neighbors and herself. Hence she had twice taken part in 
great wars against France, assisting Germans and others 
to resist Louis XIV and Napoleon. Her greatest duel 
liad been with France during the Revolution and under 



Causes of 
the great- 
ness of 
England 



British 
policy 



96 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Struggle 

with 

Napoleon 



Government 



Extension of 
the fran- 
chise 



Napoleon; and during some years in the period of Na- 
poleon's greatness, she alone, guarded by her navy and 
supported by her industry and trade, had held out against 
him. During those years she had assisted all of his enemies 
and expended vast sums in the struggle. After Waterloo 
the great menace of his power had been finally removed, 
and Britain, needing time to restore her strength and 
reduce the immense national debt of £840,000,000 which 
weighed down upon her, soon withdrew as much as 
possible from European affairs, into what was sometimes 
spoken of as "splendid isolation." 

The government of Britain in 1870 was the most 
advanced and liberal in Europe; and, except for certain 
years during the French Revolution when Frenchmen 
made such rapid reforms, it had been so for many gene- 
rations. Practically this government was vested in a 
parliament, the more important part of which, the House 
of Commons, was elected by a portion of the people. At 
the beginning of the nineteenth century this parliamentary 
representation had not been in proportion to population, 
nor had more than one man out of ten the right to vote, 
the franchise being generally restricted by property quali- 
fications. The French Revolution and ideas of political 
equality and the rights of man had little direct effect upon 
Britain for some time, save to cause a temporary reaction, 
but after the threatening danger of revolution and war 
had passed, gradually great changes were made. In 1832 
the franchise was somewhat extended. In 1867 it was 
extended considerably more. Even this latter reform 
law by no means permitted all the men of the United 
Kingdom to vote, the franchise still being restricted by 
property qualifications. Such restriction might seem to 
compare unfavorably with conditions in the French Second 
Empire and in the new North German Confederation, 
where universal manhood suffrage now prevailed; but in 
the Confederation the legislature thus elected did not 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 



97 



really control the government, and in France all real power 
had been taken into the emperor's hands. In Britain 
by the beginning of the nineteenth century the executive, 
the cabinet or ministry, had come to be, in effect, a com- 
mittee of the House of Commons, directly dependent for a 
continuance of power on the support of a majority of the 
representatives elected to the Commons. In Prussia the 
ministers were the king's ministers, and in France since the 
Restoration, though the British system of government 
had been copied, as it was during the nineteenth century 
in most European countries when constitutionalism was 
established, generally the ministry had not been de- 
pendent upon a legislative majority and hence not con- 
trolled by it. However, it should be noticed, that in 
France at this very time, since the power of Napoleon III 
had been weakening year by year, he had been striving to 
conciliate the people to his rule by making the government 
more liberal to please them, and that in 1870 the ministry 
was made dependent upon the representatives elected, as 
in the United Kingdom. 

During this time, while the franchise was being more 
widely extended in the United Kingdom — so that gradu- 
ally the government was being transformed from an 
aristocracy, which it had been at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, to a commonwealth in which a great 
part of the people had direct control of the government for 
themselves — the rule of the Empire also was liberalized. 
In the first half of the nineteenth century the armed forces 
previously stationed in the various outlying parts were 
gradually withdrawn from those communities in which 
white men predominated, at the same time that the 
government of these communities was being transferred 
to the control of their inhabitants. A beginning had been 
made by the Canada Government Act of 1840; and this 
was merely the first stage in a process by which the British 
Empire was to be gradually transformed in part from an 



The govern- 
ment con- 
trolled by 
representa- 
tives elected 



The British 
Empire 



98 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Social 
reforms 



Evil condi- 
tions in 
Ireland 



imperial organization of the old type into a group of self- 
governing dominions bound together by common heritage 
and mutual attachment. 

During the period after the fall of Napoleon, old laws 
passed for discrimination or persecution had been re- 
moved, and presently efforts were made to better the lot 
of the mass of the people. The Church of England had 
been established as part of the government in the sixteenth 
century, and thereafter many discriminations were made 
against Roman Catholics and Protestants not adhering to 
the Anglican Church. Moreover, the government had 
during the eighteenth century come substantially under 
the control of the great aristocrats and property owners. 
But in 1828 and 1829 respectively were repealed the laws 
against Dissenters and Roman Catholics, which had de- 
barred them from many of the rights of citizens. The 
passing of the electoral reform laws widened the electorate 
and gave a share of the government first to the middle 
class then to a portion of the lower class. Enlarged 
power of the lower class together with the increasing 
humanitarianism of the time led to the passing in 1833 and 
1844 of laws to regulate hours of labor for women and 
children, while beginning with 1824 a series of laws was 
passed legalizing the trade unions of workers, formerly 
forbidden. For some time there was great discontent 
among the poorer people, the Chartists demanding more 
rapid reform and much more thorough change, but after 
1848 this died out very largely. In 1846 the so-called 
Corn Laws had been repealed, thereby allowing the im- 
portation of cheap food for the masses. Then still greater 
industrial prosperity developed. In 1870 Britain was first 
in commerce and first in industry and wealth. 

In the splendid prosperity and power of Great Britain, 
Ireland, the other part of the United Kingdom, had almost 
no share, though industrialism had been successfully 
developed in the northeastern portion among the British 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 



99 



immigrants in Ulster. In the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries Ireland had finally been conquered by England, 
the land had been confiscated, and the Celtic people had 
been dispossessed. During the eighteenth century they 
bad been subjected to discriminations which debarred 
most of them from almost all of a citizen's rights. The 
great majority of them lived as poverty-stricken ten- 
ants on the estates of landlords. In 1793, however, Irish 
Catholics were allowed to vote in elections, and in 1829 
they, along with Catholics in Great Britain, were given 
political equality with Protestants. Forty years later 
the Irish Church, a Protestant Church imposed by the 
government upon an unwilling Catholic population, was 
abolished, and in 1870, indeed, a series of laws was begun 
by which in course of time the economic condition of the 
peasants would be immensely improved. Actually, how- 
ever, by 1870, the condition of these people had not been 
greatly bettered. Since the beginning of the century the 
population, as is often the case, had been increasing very 
rapidly in the midst of ignorance, misery, and scanty living. 
Agriculture was the sole support of the peasants, who held 
the little patches of ground which they worked by paying 
rack-rents to English landlords. Frequently they suffered 
hunger and were near to starvation. In 1846-9 a great 
famine, followed by pestilence, swept away a large part 
of the population, after which there began an exodus 
of the surviving people to other lands, especially to the 
United States. The population, which had increased from 
5,000,000 at the beginning of the century to 8,000,000 by 
1846, was now rapidly declining, as emigrants year by 
year were leaving their home to carry unquenchable hatred 
of Britain to other countries all over the world. Just 
before 1870 the Fenians, an Irish revolutionary society, 
supported by Irishmen in America, were attempting to 
get independence for Ireland by creating a reign of terror 
in Ireland and in England, 



The con- 
quest of 
Ireland 



The Great 
Famine 



100 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Great Brit- 
ain and the 
United 
States 



The two 
great 

branches of 
the English- 
speaking 
people 



Irishmen in the United States had long been doing, 
what they afterward continued to do, as much as they 
could to embitter relations between Britain and the 
United States. These relations, which had not been good, 
were now nevertheless improving. In 1783, following 
the American Revolutionary War, the principal English 
colonies on the mainland of North America had won in- 
dependence. Viewed m larger aspect now this struggle 
appears as one of the few civil wars among the English- 
speaking people. In the years 1641-1660 there had been 
civil war in England itself, but after great temporary 
upheaval this at last came to an end. In the years 1775- 
1783 there was conflict between the two principal parts 
of the English-speaking people on the two sides of the 
Atlantic Ocean. This resulted in the secession of the 
American commonwealths and the permanent division 
of the English-speaking people into two principal separate 
parts. From 1861 to 1865 there was a struggle among 
the English-speaking people in the United States, but 
after the longest and most terrible war since Napoleon's 
time, the South, which had attempted to establish its 
separation and independence, was forcibly brought back 
and reunited in the United States. All during the period 
since the adoption of the American Constitution (1787-9), 
and indeed little interrupted by the conflict of the Civil 
War, the young nation had gone forward with giant 
strides to greater prosperity and power, until now it held 
promise of being, what it was destined to become in an- 
other fifty years, the wealthiest and most important group 
of civilized people in the world. Already by 1870 its 
population exceeded that of the United Kingdom. 

Between Britain and the United States there had long 
been much rancor and ill-feeling, though since 1814 never 
any armed conflict. Memories of the Revolutionary War 
and the War of 1812 caused most Americans to think of the 
British as oppressors whose yoke had been cast off, at the 




5. EOT 




IN 1870 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 101 



same time that they despised them as subjects of a king, 
while they boasted that they Hved in a repubhc as free 
men. On the other hand, Enghshmen thought of Ameri- 
cans as ungrateful colonists, who would bear none of the 
burdens of the British Empire, and who had ungratefully 
cast off their allegiance as soon as they could; and they 
looked down upon them as rough and inferior people in a 
new, rude country. All disputes between the two nations 
were arranged peaceably, however, after 1814, and slowly 
relations became better. The great crisis had just been 
reached during the Civil War, when] the British Govern- 
ment recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent, sym- 
pathizing with its cause and hoping that it would win 
independence. Confederate privateers fitted out in Eng- 
land swept American commerce from the seas, arousing 
great bitterness in the North against England. Never- 
theless, a great part of the middle and lower classes in 
Britain earnestly hoped that the North would win, and 
that negro slavery would be abolished. The turning- 
point came when the war ended in 1865 with the complete 
triumph of the North, and when two years later the Elec- 
toral Reform Law of 1867 made the Government of the 
United Kingdom much more of a government by its people 
than before. Gradually in spirit and character the 
governments of Britain and the United States came much 
closer together. The American Government was now 
asking that England pay for the damage done by the 
Southern privateers fitted out in English ports, and the 
dispute about this caused relations to be strained and 
unpleasant; but the Alabama Claims were about to be 
adjusted peaceably a little later (1871-2), by treaty and 
arbitration, perhaps the most important example of 
such settlement of a difiFerence between two great nations 
up to that time. 

In 1870 the leading nation on the Continent of Europe 
was France, who had recovered the position she had so 



MutupJ 

bitter 

feelin? 



The two 
peoples 
come closer 
together 



The position 
of France 



102 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The leading 
Continental 
state 



Greatness 
and down- 
fall 



Recovery 
of strength 



long held as the principal Continental state. During the 
eighteenth century, despite much failure and incompetent 
administration, she had held this position generally, be- 
cause she contained twice as many energetic and highly 
civilized people as any other well-organized state then. 
During all this time the French were leaders in European 
civilization; their language was everywhere known or 
used by educated people; their styles, their taste, their 
manners were universally imitated, while the ideas of 
their philosophers and writers about social and economic 
matters were studied with enthusiasm in every quarter. 

In France it was that the great Revolution began, which 
in the western half of Europe swept away the relics of the 
feudal system, bringing many civil and social inequalities 
to an end. Thence spread out over neighboring lands 
ideas about political equality and the rights of man. There 
was built up the stupendous power of Napoleon. For 
some years at the beginning of the century France had 
been the center of the greatest empire seen for ages, and 
from Paris edicts had gone forth to be obeyed from War- 
saw unto Madrid. Then came the collapse of the Napo- 
leonic Empire, and with it, for some time, the end of the 
leadership of France. The French emissary, Talleyrand, 
was soon admitted to the inner circle of the small group of 
great men who decided the destinies of Europe at Vienna, 
but the settlement of 1814-15 was essentially a reversal 
of much of what France had accomplished in the past 
generation. When Napoleon staked all on a final contest 
in 1813-14, France lost the "natural frontiers," which the 
Revolutionary armies had won, and which carried her 
boundary to the Rhine. These frontiers, perhaps, she 
might have retained permanently had Napoleon been 
willing to compromise before it was too late. 

After Waterloo for a generation or more France was 
remembered as a danger to the other nations and a dis- 
turber of the peace of Europe; and for some time she was 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 103 



regarded with as much suspicion as defeated Germany 
was a hundred years later. During this time any attempt 
to alter the territorial arrangements made at Vienna, 
perhaps even the reestablishing of a republic in France, 
would almost certainly have brought the French into 
conflict with another European coalition. It was the 
principal service of the French kings who reigned from 
1814 to 1848 that they kept the peace, gradually allayed 
the suspicion of their neighbors, and gave the country time 
to recover from the exhaustion which the years preceding 
had entailed. In 1848 a series of revolutions shook the 
power of the conservative statesmen who had been 
standing guard since Napoleon went to St. Helena, and 
gradually the situation altered. A second republic was 
established in France in 1848, succeeded by a second em- 
pire, under the nephew of the great Napoleon, in 1852. 
Already the French people, because of the inexhaustible 
fertility of their soil, because of a rising industrialism, 
and most of all as a result of their own energy and amazing 
recuperative power, had fully recovered their strength. 
The emperor, Napoleon III, partly to strengthen his own 
position, soon embarked upon an ambitious policy in 
foreign relations, and soon, with Britain largely holding 
aloof from European affairs, France regained her old 
position as leader among the European nations. In 1854 
France, along with Great Britain and afterward Pied- 
mont, assisted the Turks against the Russians in the Cri- 
mean War; and the Congress which followed this struggle 
was held at Paris to make the treaty which brought the 
conflict to an end. In 1859 Napoleon assisted the Ruman- 
ians to unite. That same year he helped the Italians to 
shake off Austria's yoke, thus paving the way for Italian 
unity also. 

Thereafter, however, French foreign policy was in- 
creasingly unsuccessful, notably in the attempt to control 
Mexico and in efforts to extend the French frontier 



Regarded 
with much 
suspicion 



The Second 
Empire 



France and 
Germany 



104 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



French 

policy 

thwarted 



Political and 
social prog- 
ress 



Socialism 



toward the Rhine. By 1870 Napoleon, baffled in all his 
recent undertakings, had brought France to the point 
where she was regarded with suspicion by most of the 
European powers, and by some of them was heartily dis- 
liked. A dangerous discord between the French Empire 
and the new North German Confederation was increasing 
each year. And by 1870 many people, realizing that 
Frenchmen viewed with hostility the rise of a new, strong, 
united Germany at their borders, and that a multitude of 
Germans did not believe their national unity could be 
completed until accounts had been settled with France, 
considered that war between the two was only a matter 
of time. 

In France as in Great Britain there had been much 
political and social progress. After the too-rapid changes 
of the Revolution reaction had come first under Na- 
poleon I, when a military despotism was established, 
afterward under the Bourbons (1814-30). But even with 
the Restoration in 1814 a constitutional government, 
modelled on that of England, had been established, and 
in the succeeding period this government was made 
more liberal and the franchise was extended. Political 
progress had recently been rapid, and in 1870 ministerial 
government had been established almost as it existed in 
England. In France, as across the Channel, the Indus- 
trial Revolution had brought great changes and large 
industrial expansion. In the French cities, as in the 
English, there had been many new baffling problems and 
much discontent among industrial workers. Socialism, 
which had its roots back before Revolutionary times, 
had developed much more in France than in England, and 
bodies of the workers awaited their opportunity to over- 
throw the existing system. The period of the Terror in 
1793-4 had seen efforts of radicals to bring to pass a 
change in the interests of the masses of the French people. 
In 1848, during a political crisis, the workingmen of Paris 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 105 



under socialist leaders had attempted to bring about 
sweeping reforms, and, when thwarted, rose in a terrible 
revolt. In 1870 no such danger seemed imminent, but in 
the very next year, after the disastrous defeat in war with 
the Germans, there was to be a similar revolt in the Com- 
mune of Paris. Nevertheless, this radicalism was con- 
fined to a number comparatively small. Since the Revo- 
lution the rulers of France had been the bourgeoisie. 
Beyond them the great mass of the people, engaged in agri- 
culture, were content with their lot, since the lands of the 
Church and the nobles had been sold to them in small 
holdings. They now formed with the bourgeoisie the great 
foundation of French institutions. 

By 1870 central Europe had undergone such great 
transformation that its arrangement was altogether dif- 
ferent from what it had been two generations, even one 
generation, earlier. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century the Germanic people, and many Slavs whom once 
they had conquered, were grouped together in three 
hundred and thirty divisions, most of them quite small, 
some of respectable size, and two, Austria and Prussia, 
large and important European states. Very loosely they 
were then bound together in the so-called Holy Roman 
Empire, at the head of which was an emperor, the ruler 
of the Hapsburg or Austrian dominions. This Empire 
was actually not bound together by any strong or effec- 
tively organized government, so that the various parts 
acted much as they pleased, sometimes in unison, some- 
times siding with foreign enemies against other members 
of the Reich. 

In 1806, when Napoleon was rearranging central 
Europe as seemed to him best, the venerable Holy Roman 
Empire came to an end, its Kaiser taking now the title 
of emperor of Austria, the dominions directly subject to 
his rule, while the various German states were not any 
longer bound together in any common organization. 



Radicalism 
in France 



Central 
Europe 



Holy Roman 
Empire and 
Germanic 
Confedera- 
tion 



106 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Ger- 
manic Con- 
federation, 
1815-66 



Halting 
progress 
toward real 
union 



After the downfall of Napoleon, however, the Congress of 
Vienna erected the Germanic Confederation, much like 
the old Empire which had disappeared, since the various 
states were only loosely bound together as before, and 
since the Diet, or general assembly, which was provided, 
had no power to enforce its decisions. The spirit of na- 
tionality rising then in central Europe, and stronger feeling 
of common possession of German language and culture, 
made many Germans yearn for a real union of the various 
German states into a closely united federation or one 
great national state. To this, however, Metternich and 
other leading statesmen were opposed. Austria, the most 
powerful of the states in question, was resolved that it 
should not come to pass, since, in any real and strong 
union of the German states, Austria, now the leader, would 
almost certainly lose her position of leadership, for the 
greater part of her extended dominions was peopled 
not by Germans but by subject Magyars, Rumans, and 
Slavs. Nevertheless, much had really been accomplished 
toward attaining the unity for which German patriots 
were yearning. "Germany" was not so divided as before 
Napoleon's time. When his work was done there re- 
mained only thirty-eight German states, several of them 
of considerable size. 

During the generation which followed 1815 little 
progress seemed to be made. The system of Metternich 
prevailed, and his system was opposed to German unity 
and to any liberal constitutional progress. Gradually, 
however, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 
central Europe and the changing times undermined his 
power, until in 1848 a series of revolutions brought his 
regime to an end. Uprisings of the people in Prussia, 
in Austria, in Hungary, and in other states, yielded reform 
and constitutions temporarily, and the most ardent Ger- 
man liberals even believed for the moment that the time 
had come when it was possible to establish a united 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 107 



German nation at last. At Frankfort a parliament 
assembled to try to bring this about, but reaction soon 
undid the work which the revolutions had accomplished, 
and the work of the Parliament came to nothing. By 
1850 the loose and inefiFective Germanic Confederation 
was restored. 

Meanwhile, to a great extent unnoticed then, economic 
ties were binding large parts of Germany together. Be- 
tween 1818 and 1842, excepting Austria and Hanover, all 
of the German states joined a customs union, the Zoll- 
verein. At the head of the antiquated Germanic Con- 
federation was Austria, apparently still the most powerful 
of all the members; but the Zollverein was headed by 
Prussia, whose strength was constantly increasing, and 
whom more and more the smaller German states were 
beginning to regard as their leader. For some time she 
had been steadily building up her military power, and now 
she prepared to dispute with Austria for the leadership 
in Germany. Relations between the two steadily became 
worse, and were designedly made worse by the great 
Prussian leader, Bismarck, until the matter came to issue 
in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. In this conflict the 
Prussians had just won complete triumph; they had an- 
nexed much neighboring German territory to their pos- 
sessions, dissolved the old Germanic Confederation, ex- 
pelled Austria from any association with the other Ger- 
man states, and out of the German states north of the 
river Main they had formed the new, powerful North 
German Confederation (1867). Thus was brought to 
pass what German patriots and statesmen had been dream- 
ing of for ages, a Germany strong^ and united. The work 
was not yet complete, but Bismarck was already plan- 
ning to bring the south German states into a larger Ger- 
man union. Actually the appearance of this new, strong 
German state in the midst of the older European states 
had disturbed the older balance of power, and equilibrium 



Partial 
union under 
Prussia 



The Nord- 
deutscheY^ 
Bund, 1867 



108 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Austria and 
Hungary 



Peoples 
of the 
Hapsburg 
dominions 



had not yet been adjusted. In after times it seemed a 
pity that German unity had not been brought about 
peaceably, if that were possible, by the republicans and 
liberals of Germany in 1848; for what had so far been 
achieved had largely been completed by Bismarck's genius 
and guile, and wrought by Prussian military might. 

In 1870 what had been the Austrian Empire had re- 
cently become the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom 
of Hungary united by a compromise, the Ausgleich, as 
the Dual Monarchy (1867). In the Middle Ages, when 
the Germans were pushing eastward and southward at 
the expense of the Slavs, one of the principal border com- 
munities had been the East Mark (eastern frontier state), 
later known as the East Kingdom, Oesterreich, Austria. 
In course of time its rulers, the Hapsburgs, by fortunate 
marriages, by skilful diplomacy, and in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries by successful wars against the 
waning power of the Turk, had enlarged their dominions, 
until the great majority of the people subject to their 
rule were not Germans but Magyars and Southern Slavs. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Austria and 
Hungary were the two principal parts of the Hapsburg 
dominions. In Austria the principal element of the 
population was the Germans, who were the ruling class, 
and most powerful and wealthy; but the majority of the 
inhabitants were the Czechs (West Slavs) of Bohemia and 
Moravia, the Poles (West Slavs) of Galicia, and the South 
Slavs of the country along the east shore of the Adriatic 
and inward. In Hungary the principal element of the 
population was the Magyars, who had once made the 
Kingdom of Hungary; but they were less than half of 
the entire population, the remaining inhabitants being 
the South Slavs of Croatia-Slavonia, and the Rumanians 
of Transylvania. Thus, Austria with Hungary had been 
a German state for the most part only because it was 
governed by Germans, and it was owing to the heteroge- 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 109 

neity of its population and its non-Germanic character 
that during the first half of the nineteenth century Aus- 
tria gradually seemed less and less the natural leader of 
the German states. During the Revolution of 1848 the 
various subject peoples hoped they might win their free- 
dom; and for a while it looked as though Hungary would 
obtain virtual independence; but in the end the Austrians, 
with the help of Russia, had subdued them all, and it 
seemed that Hapsburg power was once more completely 
established. 

Actually, however, the subject peoples, especially the The >ius- 
Magyars, were burning with a sense of their own national- jj^^*j j^^^^, 
ity, and waiting for another opportunity to throw off the archy 
yoke. Then Austria was unsuccessful in her foreign rela- 
tions, being defeated by France in 1859, and presently 
in 1866, suffering disastrous defeat at the hands of the 
Prussians. In the midst of this failure abroad and sullen 
discontent at home it was necessary to make some new ar- 
rangement. Accordingly, in 1867, by the Ausgleich, the 
Austrians came to a good understanding with the most 
powerful of the discontented peoples, the Magyars. The 
Dual Monarchy now established was to be a union of an 
Austria and a Hungary, substantially equal; with the 
Germans, the minority in Austria, controlling affairs 
there, and the Magyars, less than half of the population 
of Hungary, controlling affairs in that part. So the 
two most powerful minorities united to keep the rest in 
subjection. This arrangement was now working well, 
and Austria-Hungary was starting forward again on the 
road of prosperity and advancement. The others, Slavs 
and Rumans, could not yet make themselves heard, and 
only dreamed of their day which might, perhaps, come in 
the future. 

To the east of the Central Powers lay the vast Russian The Russian 
Empire, stretching for seven thousand miles, from the Empire 
Carpathian Mountains to the Pacific coast of northeast 



110 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Growth of 
the power 
of Russia 



Condition of 
the people in 
Russia 



Asia, embracing all the great plain of the eastern half of 
Europe, and beyond the Ural Mountains, all the north 
part of Asia. Some far-reaching and fundamental re- 
forms had just been made in Russia, but down to within a 
decade of 1870 the condition of the Russian people had 
changed but little in many generations. For a long time 
the history of this part of the world had had to do mostly 
with the expansion of the Great Russian race, one of the 
parts of the Northern Slavs, from the district about Mos- 
cow, where their power first arose. To the east and the 
south they had gone, until in the course of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries they had built up a great inland 
Muscovite state, and sent forth colonists and traders to 
take the Siberian country in Asia. Meanwhile to the west 
they had come into contact with the Poles, previously the 
leading Slavic people. During the eighteenth century 
they took what they wished from their neighbors to the 
west: Baltic provinces from Sweden in the north, terri- 
tory from Turks and Tartars in the south, and most of 
Poland, when it was partitioned (1772, 1793, 1795). At 
the beginning of the nineteenth century the Russians 
had held their own against Napoleon, and at the Congress 
of Vienna the tsar had been looked upon as the mightiest 
ruler in Europe. 

The great French ideas of the Revolution and Napo- 
leon's time scarcely even touched Russia, whose people 
remained unreached by the influences that so profoundly 
altered life in the western half of the Continent. The 
government was an autocracy, with all the power of Church 
and State concentrated in the hands of the ruler, the tsar, 
while administration was actually carried on by a bureau- 
cracy of numerous officials appointed by him and respon- 
sible to him. There was a small upper class of nobles, 
many of them poor and without much power. There was 
a small bourgeoisie, so scanty as compared with the vast 
numbers in the realm as scarcely to have any weight. 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 111 



Beneath was the great mass of the nation, the peasants, 
Hving in their lonely and dirty httle villages in the forest 
and over the plains, carrying on a primitive agriculture, 
devoted adherents of the Greek Catholic or Orthodox 
faith, living in village communities and bound in serfdom, 
much as the peasants of western Europe had lived two or 
three centuries before. Few of these people could read or 
write. Most of them had the intellectual outlook of 
medieval peasants. Save in the petty concerns of their 
villages none of them had aught to do with the govern- 
ment of the country or any control over it. Many of 
them were oppressed by the judges and oflBcials. For 
most of them life was hard and poverty-stricken, lonely, 
meager, and bare. 

Generally the rulers of Russia had been conservative 
and intensely desirous of retaining autocratic power and 
established position. For a while Alexander I (1801-1825) 
had tried to act as a liberal, but his successor, Nicholas I 
(1825-1855), had been thoroughly reactionary, and re- 
solved that none of the dangerous doctrines recently risen 
in the west should enter his country. He and others 
of the ruling class of Russia, as was afterward the case, 
were firmly resolved to maintain the power and privileges 
of their ruling class; but they were also anxious to keep 
unchanged Russian institutions, Russian character, and 
the Russian religion, which they considered to be superior 
to all others. During the lifetime of Nicholas I western 
and radical ideas had been almost completely kept out 
of Russia, through repression, censorship, and the unceas- 
ing vigilance of spies and police. Meanwhile, there was 
not only no progress in the country, but deterioration and 
decay set in, while the government became constantly 
more corrupt and inefficient. So long as Russia was con- 
sidered invincible in war it was possible to uphold this 
system, but during the Crimean War (1854-6) Russian 
armies were shamefully defeated, and it was evident that 



The Russian 
peasants 



The govern- 
ment of 
Russia 



112 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

the people's discontent with evil conditions and poor ad- 
ministration at length would have to be appeased. 
The great During the war a new tsar, Alexander II (1855-1881), 

reforms ^^^ come to the throne. At once he undertook great 

reforms. By the abolition of serfdom (1859-1866) the 
peasants were relieved of manorial obligations, made com- 
pletely free, and given part of the lands on which they had 
worked. In 1864 the judicial system was reformed, 
jury trial and western principles being introduced. At the 
same time larger rights of local self-government were 
granted in the rural divisions, and, in 1870, also in the 
cities. But by that time the reform movement in Russia 
had come to an end. On the one hand there was reaction 
because the upper class believed that too-great innovations 
had been made. On the other hand, there was great dis- 
illusion and disappointment on the part of numerous 
simple people who had expected everything to be re- 
formed, but who at once discovered much of evil still re- 
maining. Wliether in the realm of the tsars the great 
changes which had come over western Europe could be 
brought about peaceably in course of time or only by force 
and revolution — all this lay hid in the future. 
The King- In Italy as in Germany a great alteration of affairs had 

domof recently taken place. After centuries of weakness, divi- 

^**^^ sion, and subjection, the Italian people had been united 

in one nation, and almost all of the peninsula had been 
brought together in the Kingdom of Italy. By 1870 the 
process was nearly complete, and, indeed, later in that 
very year the last, crowning part of the work would be 
done. Italians then were in the midst of the grand part 
of their modern history, thrilling with patriotism, their 
hearts warm with new sense of dignity, greatness, and 
success. In 1870, however, a great part of all the people 
then living could remember when Italians were not only 
divided among several small states, as the Germans had 
been, but when some of them had been in subjection to 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 113 



foreign masters, and almost all of the others ruled by 
despots dependent upon foreign masters. 

During the Middle Ages, when nation states were 
being built up in England, in France, and in Spain, out of 
the smaller fragments in which these countries were pre- 
viously divided, in Italy the spirit of localism was so strong, 
and such striking and brilliant individuality developed 
in different places, that for some time the peninsula 
was crowded with small city-states, much as old Greece 
once had been. During all this time there were efforts 
to consolidate these fragments into larger jurisdictions; 
but every effort to accomplish any Italian unity was 
brought to nothing, partly because the German emperors 
of the Holy Roman Empire always attempted to keep 
Italy a part of their dominions, and even more because the 
popes at Rome, wishing to be the most important sover- 
eigns in the country, thwarted all attempts to make one, 
united Italian nation. Later on, when the Italians 
were conquered by foreign powers, Italy was only a geo- 
graphical expression, as Metternich said some centuries 
later, and the Italian people remained divided among 
divers small states. During the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries they were ruled by the pope, by the 
Spaniards, and by princes under the shadow of Spain. 
In the eighteenth century the power of Spain was suc- 
ceeded by the dominion of Austria. During the French 
Revolution the Austrian masters were expelled, but Italy 
was soon made a part of the empire which Napoleon con- 
structed. The Napoleonic era, along with much suffering, 
brought a great deal of good, since the previous smaller 
divisions were now consolidated into three large parts, 
and among the people feeling of nationality was awakened. 

The Congress of Vienna, when it rearranged European 
affairs, had ignored the aspirations of the Italian people 
even as it disregarded those of the Germans. The north 
part of the country, around Milan and Venice, was left an 



Italy in 
earlier times 



Italian na* 

tionality 

thwarted 



114 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Risorgi- 
mento 



The unifica- 
tion of Italy 



Austrian province, and all the remainder, divided in parts 
as before, was ruled by sovereigns subservient to the 
Austrian power. 

In vain had a secret society, the Carbonari, endeavored 
to throw off the foreigner's yoke. In vain the patriots 
rose to get reform and independence; always the move- 
ments were easily crushed by the superior Austrian power. 
Nevertheless, during all this time a Risorgimento (resurrec- 
tion) had been going on, under the leadership of various 
aspiring men, chief among whom was Mazzini, who 
founded the society Giovine Italia (Young Italy), placing 
his hopes in the youth of the land. During this stirring 
of mind the Italian people were taught to consider them- 
selves as one nation, with one language and common 
traditions, heirs of a glorious past, and destined to have 
happiness and glory once more when unity would be 
achieved in the future. 

The establishment of the Italian nation was brought 
about under the leadership of the north Italian state of 
Piedmont (Sardinia) , and was due, above all others, to the 
consummate leadership of the Italian statesman Cavour. 
With great skill he obtained the assistance of France, 
and then in a war with Austria (1859) Lombardy, part of 
Austria's possessions, was conquered. Fired with en- 
thusiasm the people of the adjoining states expelled 
their princelings, and despite the opposition of France, the 
states were permitted to join with the greater Piedmont, 
so that most of the northern half of Italy was free and 
united. Next year Garibaldi, an Italian patriot and 
exile, led an expedition into Sicily and Naples, and easily 
conquered all the southern half of the peninsula, yielding 
all this country at once to the king of Piedmont. In 
1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, embracing the 
entire peninsula excepting Venetia and the city of Rome 
with a small domain about it. In 1866 Italy, joining 
Prussia against Austria, obtained Venetia as her reward. 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 115 



In 1870 a French garrison was still holding Rome for 
the pope, but the Italian people were hoping that some 
day the old capital of the country would become the 
capital of their new state. 

In southern Europe, at the western and the eastern 
extremities, were two states, once great but now in decline 
and decay. At the western gateway of the Mediterran- 
ean was Spain, with grandeur departed and glory gone. 
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries she had for a 
while been the greatest power in the world, dominating 
much of western and central Europe, and in possession 
of the greatest commerce and the most extensive and 
wealthiest colonial empire which the world ever had seen. 
But poverty of natural resources in Spain, emigration of 
the best Spaniards to the colonies in America, expulsion 
of Moorish artisans and Jewish business men, and religi- 
ous intolerance which forbade much intellectual activity, 
soon brought decline. Subject provinces in Europe were 
lost, Spanish armies were defeated, and Spain ceased 
to be leader in Europe. At the beginning of the eighteenth 
century a great European war was fought concerning the 
possessions of Spain, and in 1713 the Spanish dominions 
in Italy and the Netherlands were lost. The vast colonial 
empire remained for another hundred years, but more and 
more the trade passed to the English. Then, in the ear- 
lier years of the nineteenth century, save for some islands 
in the Caribbean, all of the American possessions of Spain 
won their complete independence. 

During the French Revolution the Spaniards were some- 
what affected by the new ideas, and in Napoleon's time 
many reforms were made in their country, but the na- 
tional uprising there against Napoleon's power was fol- 
lowed by a period of reaction. Thereafter during the 
nineteenth century the history of Spain had been con- 
cerned with a succession of struggles between a minority 
of liberals, who would bring reform, and the majority of 



Spain in the 
past 



X 



During the 

French 

Revolution 



116 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

In 1870 the nation, conservative or ignorant and superstitious, 

while the country was also torn by strife between rival 
claimants to the throne. In 1870, indeed, the throne was 
vacant, as the result of a revolution, and the Spanish 
leaders were seeking a new sovereign throughout Europe. 
The fundamental cause of the lowly position in which the 
Spanish people now found themselves was that world- 
conditions had altered : other nations possessed greater re- 
sources and had become relatively richer and greater; 
change of the principal trade routes had left Spaniards 
more outside the world's greatest affairs; while the coal 
and iron which were making some industrial nations great 
were to no large extent available in Spain. 
The Otto- At the other end of the Mediterranean were the relics 

man Empire ^f ^^ie Ottoman Empire, extending from Constantinople 
up through the Balkans, and down across the Bosporus 
through Asia Minor, into Mesopotamia, into Palestine, 
and nominally around the north African shore, through 
Tripoli and Egypt. It was still great in size, but its 
power and its strength had departed. The Turks, like 
the Hungarians and the Finns, were alien intruders in 
Europe. In the fourteenth century they had crossed 
into Europe from Anatolia, in Asia Minor, where already 
they had laid the foundations of their state. In 1453 
they captured Constantinople and by the sixteenth cen- 
tury, if they were not the greatest power in Europe, 
they were yet so powerful as to menace all of their 
neighbors. All the eastern Mediterranean as well as the 
Black Sea was held firmly in their grip, and their Euro- 
pean boundaries were pushed up as far as the Danube. 
Brave as warriors and essentially a military nation, the 
developing civilization of western Europe presently left 
them behind, and they were no longer able to wage war 
with Christian states, which possessed superior organiza- 
tion and equipment. In 1571 they were defeated in the 
great naval battle of Lepanto; and in 1683 before the 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 117 



walls of Vienna. Accordingly their conquests came to an 
end, and their outlying provinces began to fall away. 
Furthermore, they had never developed any good political 
organization, so that their empire merely consisted of a 
conglomeration of different subject peoples, oppressed 
and debased, but retaining their own religion, speech, and 
racial consciousness. Among these subjects the Turkish 
conquerors hved — a minority of the entire population — 
keeping their position by force and by maintaining the 
differences between the various bodies of their subjects. 

The condition of the subject majority in the European 
dominions of Turkey was extremely bad. This was not 
so much because of the cruelty and wickedness of the 
Turks as from their lack of administrative ability and 
genius to govern wisely and well. Moreover, it was 
probably not much worse than the condition of most of 
the peasants in the Hapsburg dominions and in Russia. 
None the less, the Christian population of Greece and the 
Balkans yearned for their freedom, and a succession 
of revolts brought them independence in whole or in 
part. Already the Greeks, with the assistance of the 
great Christian powers, had achieved their independence, 
while the Serbs and the Rumanians had won autonomy 
under overlordship of the sultan. Long before 1870 
Turkey would probably have been extinguished by a 
Russian conquest, had it not been for the opposition first 
of Great Britain, afterward of Austria and Britain. In 
the first half of the eighteenth century the Ottoman Em- 
pire had seemed to Montesquieu as a sick man, and 
afterward its end was often predicted and expected. 
Many believed that it would be a blessing if this came to 
pass. "As a matter of humanity I wish with all my soul," 
said Stratford Canning in 1821, "that the Sultan were 
driven bag and baggage into the heart of Asia." 
During all this time, however, the failing power of the 
Turk was effectively protected by the jealousies of the 



The waning 
of the 
crescent 



Condition of 
the subject 
peoples 



118 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The smaller 
states 



The neutral- 
ized states 



great European states. This had just been strikingly 
shown. Russia under Tsar Nicholas I aspired, apparently, 
to get possession of Constantinople, long desired by the 
Russians, and so obtain for Russia a better outlet on the 
great seas of the world. Against her France and England 
had fought the Crimean War (1854-6), defeating her and 
saving Turkey from destruction. 

In 1870 the smaller states of Europe were going forward, 
some in quiet prosperity, under the shadow of their 
mightier neighbors. Greece was poor and small, but 
independent, and developing her commerce, as of old. In 
the Balkans some of the Christian peoples, like the Bul- 
gars, still were ruled by the Turk; others, like the Serbs 
and the Rumanians, had their autonomy, and were expect- 
ing more complete independence in the future. The Scan- 
dinavian countries, once the source of so much terror and 
power, were now outside the current of mightier affairs, 
their scanty resources not having permitted development 
like that which had come to their neighbors to the south. 
Denmark was small and unimportant, and had recently 
lost her two southern provinces, Schleswig and Holstein 
(1864). The Congress of Vienna had given Norway to 
Sweden, in place of Finland, long a Swedish possession, 
but taken by Russia in 1809, so that Norway and Sweden, 
different as they were in the character of their peoples, 
and in economic development, were ruled by one king. 
Holland, though dispossessed of some of her colonies during 
the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, still had one 
of the wealthiest colonial empires, and was prosperous 
through agriculture and commerce. The remaining three 
states had recently been neutralized, Switzerland in 1815, 
Belgium in 1831, and Luxemburg in 1867, thus giving 
them, it was hoped, security and peace, and at the same 
time putting them outside the greater currents of Euro- 
pean politics. The Belgians, since their successful re- 
volt from Holland in 1830, and the establishment of a 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 119 

Belgian state by the Great Powers in 1831, had gone for- 
ward greatly in industrial prosperity and wealth. Previ- The Swiss 
ous to 1848 the Swiss people had been united in a loose con- Republic 
federation. In that year civil war broke out, when the 
Sonderbund, an organization of the more conservative 
cantons, tried to leave the others. This secession was 
prevented, and in the same year a new constitution was 
adopted, making of the Swiss communities a strong, com- 
pact federal union. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland: the best 
of the shorter works for detailed reading is A. L. Cross, A His- 
tory of England and Greater Britain (1914). The best general 
history of England is the cooperative work, The Political His- 
tory of England, edited by the Rev. William Hunt and R. L. 
Poole, 12 vols. (1905-10). For the later period, Sir Spencer 
Walpole, History of England Since 1815, 6 vols, (revised edition, 
1902-5), based on thorough study of contemporary accounts. 
For the government of England: A. L. Lowell, The Government 
of England, 2 vols. (ed. 1912), best; Sir William Anson, The 
Law and Custom of the Constitution, 3 vols. (ed. 1907-9); Walter 
Bagehot, The English Constitution (ed. 1911); A. V. Dicey, 
Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (8th ed. 
1915); Sidney Low, The Governance of England (ed. 1914); Sir 
Courtney Ilbert, Parliament (1911). 

France : the best and most important work on the period be- 
fore 1789 is the great cooperative work edited by E. Lavisse, 
Histoire de France depuis les Origines jusqu^a la Revolution, 9 vols. 
in 18 (1900-10). For the later period the most important work, 
also edited by Lavisse, is now appearing: Histoire de France 
Contemporaine, to be complete in 10 vols., covering the period 
from 1789, vols. I, II (1920); another important work is the 
cooperative history edited by Jean Jaures, Histoire Socialiste, 
1789-1900, 12 vols. (1901-9), the different volumes written by 
prominent French socialists. Also Pierre de la Gorce, Histoire 
de la Seconde Republique Frangaise, 2 vols. (7th ed. 1914), His- 
toire du Second Empire, 7 vols. (4th ed. 1896-1905), from the cleri- 
cal point of view; Henry Houssaye, 1815, 3 vols. (1896-1905); 
Blanchard Jerrold, The Life of Napoleon III, 4 vols. (1874-82), 



120 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

sympathetic; L. Michon, Le Gouvernement Parlementaire sous la 
Restauration (1905); Emile Ollivier, L'Empire Liberal, 17 vols. 
(1895-1914); Georges Weill, La France sous la Monarchie Con- 
stitutionelle, 1814-18 J^8 (1912). 

' The Germanies and Prussia: Ernst Berner, Geschichie des 
Preussischen Staates (2d ed. 1896) ; W. H. Dawson, The German 
Empire: 1867-19U, 2 vols. (1919); E. Denis, La Fondation 
de VEmpire Allemand, 1852-1871 (1906); K. T. von Heigel, 
Deutsche Geschichie vom Tode Friedrichs des Grossen bis zur 
Auflbsung des Alien Reiches, 2 vols. (1899-1911); Heinrich von 
Sybel, Die Begrilndung des Deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm I, 
7 vols. (1889-90), trans, by M. L. Perrin and Gamaliel Brad- 
ford, 7 vols. (1890-8); Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche 
Geschichie im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 5 vols. (3d ed. 1895), 
from the period of the French Revolution, brilliantly WTitten, 
strongly nationalist, hostile to the liberals, trans, by E. and C. 
Paul, Vols. I-VII (1915-19); H. von Zwiedineck-SUdenhorst, 
Deutsche Geschichie von der Auflosung des Allen bis zur Errichtung 
des Neuen Kaiserreiches (1806-1871), 3 vols. (1897-1905). 

The Holy Roman Empire, Austria, and Austria-Hungary: 
Archdeacon Wilham Coxe, History of the House of Austria from 
1218 to 1792 (many editions); Heinrich Friedjung, Oesterreich 
von 1848 bis 1860, 2 vols. (1908-12), best for the period, Der 
Kampf um die Vorherrschaft in Deulschland, 1859 bis 1866, 2 
vols. (6th ed. 1904-5); Franz Krones, Handbuch der Geschichie 
Oesterreichs, 5 vols. (1876-9) ; P. M. Leger, Histoire de VAulriche- 
Hongrie, depuis les Origines jusqua V Annie 1878 (1879), trans, 
by Mrs. B. Hill (1889). 

Russia: the best book to give the beginner an acquaintance 
with the Russian people and their life is Sir D. M. Wallace, 
Russia (ed. 1912). The best recent work in English on Russian 
history is Raymond Beazley, Nevill Forbes, and G. A. Birkett, 
Russia, from the Varangians to the Bolsheviks (1918). The older 
standard work is Alfred Rambaud, Histoire de la Russie depuis 
les Origines jusqua Nos Jours (6th ed. completed to 1913 by E. 
Haumant, 3 vols. 1914), Enghsh trans., 3 vols. (1881). Also 
V. O. Kliuchevsky, abridged and trans, by C. J. Hogarth, A 
History of Russia, 3 vols. (1911-13), best account of, to the end 
of the seventeenth century; A. Kornilov, English trans, by A. 
S. Kaun, Modern Russian History, 2 vols. (1917); Maxime 
Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (1891), 
Russian Political Institutions (1902), excellent and scholarly; 



EUROPEAN STATES IN 1870 121 

James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia, 2 vols. (1914), 
best economic history; W. R. A. Morfill, History of Russia from 
the Birth of Peter the Great to the Death of Alexander II (1902) ; 
T. Schiemann, Geschichte Russlands unter Kaiser Nikolaus I, 4 
vols. (1904-19) ; F. H. Skrine, The Expansion of Russia (3d ed. 
1915). 

Italy : Janet P. Trevelyan, A Short History of the Italian People 
(1920) ; P. L. Orsi, L' Italia Moderna: Storia degli Ultimi 150 Anni 
(2d ed. 1902). Also M. Brah, Geschichte des Kirchenstaats, 3 vols. 
(1897-1900); Bolton King, History of Italian Unity, 2 vols. 
(1899), best account of, in English; Ernesto Masi, II Risorgi- 
mento Italiano, 2 vols. (1918); W. J. Stillman, The Union of 
Italy, 1815-1895 (1898); G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldis Defense 
of the Roman Republic (1907), Garibaldi and the Thousand (1909), 
Garibaldi and the Making of Italy (1911), brilliantly written; 
H. R. Whitehouse, Collapse of The Kingdom of Naples (1899). 

Spain: C. E. Chapman, A History of Spain (1919), based 
mostly on Don Rafael Altamira, Historia de Espana y de la 
Civilizacion Espanola, 4 vols. (1900-11), the best general work. 
Also Butler Clarke, Modern Spain, 1815-1898 (1906); G. D. du 
Dezert, UEspagne de VAncien Regime, 3 vols. (1897-1904); 
Gustave Hubbard, Histoire Contemporaine de VEspagne, 6 vols. 
(1869-83), excellent for the period 1814-1868; M. A. S. Hume, 
Spain: Its Greatness and Decay (1479-1788) (1888); E. H. 
Strobel, The Spanish Revolution, 1868-1875 (1898). 

The Ottoman Empire: Stanley Lane-Poole, The Story of 
Turkey (1897); Nicholae Jorga, Geschichte des Osmanischen 
Reiches, 5 vols. (1908-13), best. 

The lesser states: P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het Neder- 
landsche Volk, 4 vols. (2d ed. 1912-15), trans, by Ruth Putnam 
and others. History of the People of the Netherlands, 5 vols. (1898- 
1912); Leon van der Essen, A Short History of Belgium (1916); 
Wilhelm Oechsli, Geschichte der Schweiz im Neunzehnten Jahr- 
hundert. Vols. I, II (1903-13), covering the period 1798-1830; 
R. N. Bain, Scandinavia, a Political History of Denmark, Norway, 
and Sweden, from 1513 to 1900 (1905). 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MILITARY TRIUMPHS OF 
GERMANY, 1864-1871 

The old political science was mistaken when it regarded the Army 
as nothing but the servant of diplomacy. . . . Such a con- 
ception . . . has vanished from our age of universal military 
service; for we all feel nowadays . . . that the very consti- 
tution of the State reposes upon the nation's share in bearing 
arms. 
Treitschke, Polities (trans. 1916), ii. 389. 

The military becomes the normal form of life. Our civil life is to be 
recast. Every citizen is to be a soldier. . . . Moltke and 
Bismarck are the great men of our age. Prussia is our model 
state of an armed and drilled nation. . . . The military be- 
comes the true type of human society; some pitiless strategist is 
a hero; some unscrupulous conspirator is a statesman; and the na- 
tion which is the best drilled and the best armed in Europe is to 
go to the van of modern civilization . . . this we owe to 
Prussia. 
Frederic Harrison in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1870. 

Und Trommeln und Pfeifen, das war mein Klang, 
Und Trommeln und Pfeifen, Soldatengesang, 
Ihr Trommeln und Pfeifen, mein Leben lang, 
Hoch Kaiser und Heer! 
LiliENCRON (who served as an officer in 1866 and 1870—1). 

The great SHORTLY after the middle of the nineteenth century 

military there was a succession of wars which then and for some 

triumphs of ^^^^ afterward seemed of most importance because of 
the Germans , -n • p r^ i^ii- t 

their part m the unmcation oi Germany and the loundmg 

of the German Empire. But seen now, in the longer per- 
spective of the time passed since then, they have a greater 
importance because they completely shifted the center 
of power in European affairs, and because the conditions 
which decided their outcome after a while affected the 

122 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



123 



life of every great people in the world. They were the 
Danish War (1864), the Austro-Prussian War (1866), and 
the Franco-German War (1870-1). The first of these 
struggles is relatively unimportant now, but the second 
marked a new era in the history of modern Europe, and the 
third the definite ending of an old one. In these two great 
wars Prussia showed herself not only the new leader of 
the German peoples, but invincible in battle and of 
matchless military might. 

The successes of the Prussians again^ Austria and of 
the Germans against France were so swift and so over- 
whelming that afterward the reputation of German 
military power was held almost as the legend of some 
strange and superhuman thing, growing in estimation 
until at last it seemed of uncanny and overpowering great- 
ness. But actually, after this military power had reached 
the height of its grandeur and then been broken to pieces, 
it was seen to have been the carefully wrought work 
of men who introduced a new principle into military usage, 
and then perfected their work with wondrous care and 
organization. In the end it was evident that they had 
brought into effect one of the most important changes in 
the nineteenth century. 

In the history of military organization in Europe since 
the breaking up of the Roman Empire there are seen to 
have been several great steps. In the Middle Ages, when 
the "feudal system" flourished, armies were composed of 
tenants who held land partly on terms of service in war. 
As the feudal system decayed, armies came to be com- 
posed much more largely of mercenaries or paid soldiers, 
sometimes hired by the ruler of a country, often as- 
sembled by some captain who made war a business. Such 
mercenaries served in the Hundred Years' War between 
England and France; they did most of the fighting in the 
numerous wars between Italian states; and they had a 
great part in ruining Germany in the Thirty Years' War. 



Military 
reputation of 
the Germans 



Armies in 

earlier 

times 



124 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Hired 
soldiers 



The national 
army in the 
French 
Revolution 



Developed 
by Prussia 



As strong national governments arose these mercenary 
soldiers were gathered together under direct authority 
of the central government. In the seventeenth century 
Louis XIV of France had a numerous army of paid soldiers ; 
the German princes had smaller ones; and a very small 
force was maintained in England. A great number of 
Irishmen served in French armies and died in the service 
of France; and German princes, like the father of Frederick 
the Great, hired or kidnapped their soldiers from all over 
Europe. It was by building up the largest and best army 
of this kind in central Europe that Prussia laid the founda- 
tions of her greatness. In this system, which continued 
in effect until the period of the French Revolution, the 
armies were small in numbers, compared with the total 
population of the country; the soldiers were professional, 
making war their business, and they were paid for their 
military service. 

The great innovation that followed was suggested by 
what the French did. During the dark period when the 
work of the Revolution seemed in danger of being over- 
thrown by foreign foes, the French republic was saved 
by great new armies drawn from the entire nation, called 
out to serve their country in its need. "All France and 
whatsoever it contains of men and resources is put under 
requisition," said the decree. In so far as this was carried 
out it substituted the idea of the men of the nation in arms 
for the older idea of a small force of hired soldiers. 

But it was left to Prussia really to effect this revolution 
in carrying on wars. It was with a standing army of the 
old type that Frederick the Great had won his triumphs, 
and it was an army of this sort which Napoleon had 
crushed at Jena. By the terms of the treaty which 
followed this defeat Napoleon, desiring permanently to 
cripple Prussia's military power, limited her army to 
42,000 men. But from the degradation of this period 
almost at once began a splendid period of regeneration 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



125 



and reform not unlike that which a few years before had 
made France herself so great. In the years from 1807 to 
1813, while Stein and Hardenberg were freeing the serfs 
and abolishing class distinctions, the army was reorganized 
by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, who, in order to evade 
Napoleon's restriction, kept under arms the 42,000 men 
only so long as necessary to give them the proper military 
training, and then summoned in succession other forces 
of equal size to receive a like training. The result of this 
was that when, in 1813, Prussia rose against the French 
Empire in the War of Liberation, she was able to put into 
the field 270,000 well-trained soldiers. And the new 
principle, which had been used in accomplishing this, was 
strengthened and preserved as soon as Napoleon was 
overthrown. In 1814 the idea of the great reformers, that 
military service was the obligation of the citizen and 
that the army should be a national force, was embodied 
in the Military Law of Boy en, which, proclaiming that 
"Every citizen is bound to defend his Fatherland," pro- 
vided for universal military service. Every man in Prus- 
sia was liable, on becoming twenty years old. He was to 
serve for three years in the standing army and two years 
in the reserve; then for fourteen years afterward he might 
be called to serve in the Landwehr, and for eleven years 
thereafter in the Landsturm. That is to say, there was 
now organized in Prussia an army of the men of the na- 
tion, part of whom were in active service and ready for 
sudden emergency, while the rest might be mobilized 
or called out from the various reserves, if the country 
should need them. 

For a long time the importance of this regulation was 
not realized outside of Prussia. Even there it was not 
fully applied, for Prussia did not really have universal 
military service. Not all the young men were called to 
the colors when they came to be twenty years old, and as 
numbers increased, the proportion of those not called 



Prussia pre- 
pares for 
the War of 
Liberation 



Boyen's 
Law, 1814 



The Prus- 
sian army 
enlarged 



126 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The work of 
Bismarck 



The work 
of Von 
Moltke and 
Von Roon 



grew steadily larger. In 1860, when the population of 
Prussia was 18,000,000, with 150,000 young men of 
military age each year, she called into service only 40,000 
as had been arranged in 1814 when the population was 
about 11,000,000. There was a bitter struggle in 1862, 
between the king and the Prussian parliament, over a 
plan brought forward by the king and his military advisers 
for enlarging the army by calling each year 65,000 youths to 
the colors. For this scheme the lower house of the Landtag 
refused to appropriate the necessary money. It was at 
this juncture that Bismarck was brought into the ministry. 
Under his guidance affairs were managed without parlia- 
mentary sanction. The desired military reforms were 
now carried through, and the standing army was in- 
creased to 400,000, with double that number of trained 
reserves in the Landwehr. 

Along with this development of a new army went the 
work of the greatest military genius in all the period be- 
tween Napoleon and Foch. In 1857 Von Moltke was 
appointed chief of staff of the Prussian army. He was 
the second greatest master of military organization and 
preparation in the nineteenth century. Since the period 
of Napoleon European railway systems had grown up and 
communications had been much altered and improved. 
Von Moltke realized clearly the importance and the 
military meaning of these changes and began training the 
commanders of the Prussian armies in great schemes of 
maneuver, mobilization, and attack, worked out in advance. 
Not only were plans elaborated in minutest detail for the 
carrying on of possible wars with other great powers near 
by, but under Von Roon the most careful arrangements 
for rapid mobilization were prepared, so that when the 
hour for action came each man might quickly know just 
what to do. Military stores and equipment were got to- 
gether, a splendid artillery was provided, and the "needle- 
gun," a breech-loading rifle, was adopted for infantry use. 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



127 



The result of all this was that by 1864 Prussia had the 
largest and best-equipped army in the world, with the 
largest number of well-trained reserves behind it, and that 
this army could be moved down to the frontier with a 
speed hitherto undreamed of. 

Outside of Prussian military circles much of this, as is 
often the case when great changes are developing, was 
little noticed or understood at the time. France was still 
considered the greatest military power on the Continent, 
and most people would have regarded Austria as more 
important than Prussia. That which opened the eyes of 
contemporaries and led directly to great changes which 
were to mark off the earlier from the latter part of the 
nineteenth century in Europe, was the series of wars 
in which the Prussian army was used and in which Bis- 
marck consolidated the German Empire. 

Moltke's plans for military campaignjs were always 
conceived with respect to political conditions and diplo- 
matic relations in Europe. With respect to these things 
he worked with Prussia's great statesman, Bismarck. 
The German statesmen who began the Great War in 
1914 were not able to prevent Germany appearing as the 
aggressor and mostly in the wrong; but Bismarck always 
contrived, sometimes with baseness and cunning but 
always with most masterly skill, to put the odium on his 
opponents, and arrange matters so that they fought 
without the sympathy or the assistance of others. 

The first contest, the Danish War, needs little attention, 
for it is principally important now because of what it led 
up to. South of Denmark were the two duchies of Schles- 
wig and Holstein, peopled largely by Germans, but joined 
with Denmark by a personal union, since the Danish king 
was also Duke of Schleswig and of Holstein. Holstein 
was a member of the Germanic Confederation. The 
Schleswig-Holstein question had long been troublesome 
in the politics of Europe. Many people in these provinces 



These 
changes 
attract 
little atten- 
tion 



Diplomacy 
and military 
stategy 



Schleswig- 
Holstein 



128 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The German 
Confedera- 
tion, Den- 
mark, and 
the Duchies 



War with 

Denmark, 

1864 



preferred some connection with their kinsmen in the Ger- 
man Confederation, but the Danish kings naturally 
desired to attach the provinces more closely to their 
kingdom. In 1852 the so-called London Protocol provided 
that while the king of Denmark might be duke of Schleswig, 
the duchy should not be made part of Denmark. In 1863, 
however, the Danish Government prepared to annex both 
duchies. The Diet of the Confederation protested, and 
the Germans were eager that the incorporation should 
be prevented. Indeed, they desired that Schleswig also 
should be admitted into their Confederation. Bismarck 
began now to plan, as he afterward declared, to annex 
the duchies to Prussia. He contrived, however, to make 
it appear that measures were only being taken to maintain 
the provisions of the Protocol of London, or else merely 
to admit Schleswig to the Confederation. Accordingly, 
he was able to bring it about that Austria, whose measures 
he had just been opposing, acted with Prussia. In Janu- 
ary 1864, the governments sent an ultimatum demand- 
ing that within forty-eight hours the Danish Government 
repeal the constitution which decreed that the provinces 
be annexed. This demand was purposely so contrived 
that it could not be accepted, and war was begun. The 
armies brought against Denmark were more than sufficient 
to overwhelm her. Von Moltke prepared a plan of cam- 
paign by which he expected in very short time to destroy 
the entire Danish army. The plan was not well carried 
out, but this only delayed the end. The Danes attempted 
to defend themselves behind the Dannevirke, a fortified line 
of defense across the narrowest part of Jutland; but their 
entrenchments were soon forced, and the entire peninsula 
overrun. The Danes at first had command of the sea, but 
this was lost and the invaders carried the war forward into 
the islands which are such an important part of the 
kingdom. In August the contest was abandoned; in 
October the Treaty of Vienna sealed the surrender of 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



129 



Denmark; and Schleswig and Holstein were yielded to the 
joint possession of Austria and Prussia. 

This was only a prelude to the greater struggle which 
followed. Bismarck was about to bring to a crisis the long 
contest between Austria and his country for leadership 
among the German peoples. He now plotted more openly 
to get the duchies for Prussia, and rapidly the relations 
between Austria and Prussia were strained to the break- 
ing point. Austria was ill prepared to maintain her 
contentions, so that she yielded to an agreement not 
satisfactory to her, the Convention of Gastein, by which 
Prussia was to administer Schleswig and she would ad- 
minister Holstein. Bismarck regarded this merely as a 
temporary measure, and busied himself so that when the 
conflict began, Austria would have no great allies but be 
obliged to fight single handed. He knew that Russia was 
friendly, and that Great Britain was not disposed to in- 
terfere in Continental matters, if she could avoid it. It was 
apparent to all, however, that it would be disadvantageous 
to France if Austria were overthrown by Prussia; but 
Bismarck, through secret negotiations which have never 
been fully revealed, probably by appearing to promise 
Napoleon territorial gains on the Rhine, made it probable 
that France would be neutral. With Italy he concluded an 
alliance early in 1866. This was a dangerous period in 
Bismarck's career, for his war policy was not popular 
in Germany; and Austria might make terms with Italy, 
or else France intervene to support Austria or seize Ger- 
man territory bordering on the Rhine. But the hazard 
passed as the crisis moved swiftly forward. Austria, 
mobilizing her forces, demanded that the disposition of 
Schleswig and Holstein be referred to the Diet of the 
Confederation. Bismarck declared this a breach of the 
Convention just made, and seized Holstein. Almost all 
the German states supported Austria, the members voting 
in the Diet that the federal forces should be used against 



Contest be- 
tween Aus- 
tria and 
Prussia 



Masterly 
diplomacy of 
Bismarck 



130 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Austro- 
Prussian 
War, 1866 



Austria 
defeated 



Prussia; and the Austro-Prussian War began in June, 
1866. 

Prussia at once brought forth the mighty weapon she 
so long had been preparing. Her available army num- 
bered 660,000 men, well trained. The infantry was armed 
with the needle-gun, which could be fired three times as 
rapidly as any other gun then in use. The artillery num- 
bered 1,000 cannon. Opposed to this the Austrians could 
bring into the field 600,000 men. Their army was based 
not on universal service like the Prussian, but on the con- 
script system, in which men could hire substitutes if they 
wished. Their infantry was armed with muzzle-loading 
rifles, inferior to the Prussian, though with longer range. 
Their artillery, 800 guns, was inferior in numbers, but it 
also had longer range. Actually, in the contest which 
followed, the Austrian artillery was very effectively 
handled, but the campaign was decided by infantry fight- 
ing. The Prussians had to use part of their forces against 
the smaller German states, but the Austrians were com- 
pelled to detach part of their army to act against the Ital- 
ians in the south. 

The great contest was fought between Austria and 
Prussia. The Austrians might well have taken the of- 
fensive and attempted an invasion of the enemy's country, 
but they resolved to act upon the defensive, and in Bo- 
hemia they awaited the attack. What followed astonished 
the world. The ideas worked out by Von Moltke called 
for grand decisive movements rapidly executed, and with 
the splendid army ready at hand all that he had planned 
could be done. With great skill the Prussian armies were 
moved through the mountain passes, and, despite all the 
efforts which the enemy could make, they were united at 
Koniggratz. In the battle which followed, the Austrians, 
after stubborn resistance, were totally defeated. Their 
retreat degenerated into a wild flight. In a few days 
Vienna was at the mercy of the foe. In less than six 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



131 



weeks Prussia had overcome all the smaller states and 
destroyed Austria's military power completely. Not since 
Napoleon's time had such rapidity of movement and such 
appalling strength been shown . In reality , Prussia was now 
the first military power in the world. As a result of the 
Treaty of Prague which followed, Austria was virtually 
excluded from German affairs; the old Confederation was 
dissolved ; Prussia became the head of a new confederation 
of the north German states; she annexed Schleswig and 
Holstein, and various other territories from those states 
which had opposed her, while Venetia was acquired by 
Italy. 

The immense significance of these changes and the 
greatness of the power which had brought them about 
were not perceived by most people at first, and could 
not be. The alteration was understood best in France, 
and soon a great deal of discontent and uneasiness arose 
there. Accordingly, out of the war of 1866 there presently 
emerged the causes of a third great struggle, this time 
between Germany, led by Prussia, and France. 

Such a war ought never to have come between civilized 
peoples, and yet, as one looks back to study the causes, it 
is hard to see how it could have been avoided. Among 
the French there was growing uneasiness that their place 
of leadership in Europe was being taken by a new, up- 
start state. The government of Napoleon III had passed 
the days of its popularity, and the Bonapartist leaders 
believed that only some great success in foreign policy 
or in war could restore it in the estimation of the people. 
Napoleon and French statesmen had expected Austria to 
win in 1866, and had probably not intended in any event 
to allow her to be so badly defeated that the political 
balance in Europe would be altered; but the struggle had 
come to an end before they could intervene or protest. 
They were bitterly disappointed that France was not 
allowed to get territorial compensations, when Prussia 



Complete 
triumph of 
Prussia 



Feeling 
in France 



Prussia and 
France 



132 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Disappoint- 
ment in 
France 



The plotting 
of Bismarck 



had just made such gains. Not only did France get noth- 
ing of the German territory by the Rhine, which she seems 
to have expected, but when Napoleon strove to acquire 
Luxemburg, Bismarck opposed it and assisted in bringing 
about the neutrahzation of that country in 1867. Na- 
poleon and his associates were completely disappointed. 
They perceived that the position of France in Europe had 
diminished through the mere change of circumstances 
elsewhere, and the French people felt instinctively that 
something was wrong. Accordingly arose in France the 
idea that there must be "Revenge for Sadowa" (Konig- 
gratz). It is probably true that the great majority of 
the French people had no desire for war with Prussia be- 
cause of these things, but the demand for action was skil- 
fully cried about by the press, which was controlled and 
cleverly manipulated by those who preferred to have war. 
Actually the French leaders tried to form an alliance with 
Austria and Italy, and some arrangements were made for 
cooperation between Austrian and French armies against 
Prussia, to take place in 1871. 

The machinations of Bismarck on the other side were 
more culpable and far more cold-blooded. Desiring the 
union of the south German states with those already in the 
North German Confederation, he believed that a success- 
ful war against some foreign enemy — particularly France, 
the traditional enemy — would serve to bring them all to- 
gether in a burst of patriotic ardor. He afterward said 
also that he did not believe the unijScation of Germany 
would be allowed if France could prevent it, and that it 
would be necessary first to overthrow her in battle. He 
felt certain, moreover, that Prussia would be victor, and 
so be raised higher in Europe than ever before. So he 
desired war with France, and tried with all of his craft and 
his skill to bring it about. These feelings did not yet 
affect most of the German people nor the king of 
Prussia, but were shared by Bismarck chiefly with the 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



133 



army leaders. In Germany also, however, the press was 
so controlled and manipulated as to hasten on the contest 
as much as that could be done. 

The direct cause, as in so many other cases, was not an 
important matter. The throne of Spain, becoming va- 
cant, was oflFered to a member of the Hohenzollern family. 
France fearing Prussian influence in Spain, when it was 
elsewhere growing so rapidly, dispatched an arrogant note 
demanding Prince Leopold's withdrawal. Bismarck be- 
lieved that this was the opportunity which he had been 
seeking to bring about war with France, but the king of 
Prussia directed that his relative's name be withdrawn. 
Bismarck's disappointment at this was such that he 
thought of resigning; but almost immediately the leaders of 
the war party in France gave him the opportunity which 
he sought. The French Government now demanded that 
under no circumstances should Leopold ever be a candi- 
date in the future. The king of Prussia, then at the vil- 
lage of Ems, rejected this demand firmly, but courteously 
enough, and then telegraphed to Bismarck an account of 
what he had done, authorizing him to publish the news. 
Bismarck deliberately, as he afterward boasted, so con- 
densed the king's words that the result was certain to seem 
insulting to the French, while at the same time the Prus- 
sian people would believe that their sovereign had been 
insulted by the insolent demands of the ambassador of 
France. Bismarck was dining with Von Moltke and with 
Von Roon, minister of war, when this was done; and they 
who a little before had been much dejected now rejoiced 
when they saw how this message so cunningly condensed 
would most probably bring the war that they wanted; 
and they finished their meal with right great joy, caring 
little, as a commentator has said, about the thousands 
of young men shortly to die and the misery to women and 
children sure to come. The French people easily fell into 
the trap, for immediately upon publication of what seemed 



The throne 
of Spain 



The Ems 
Dispatch 



134 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Franco- 
German 
War, 1870-1 



France not 
prepared 



to them such an afiPront, war was declared. And so well 
had the thing been contrived that the war was very 
popular in Germany. All the rest of the North German 
Confederation immediately gave support to Prussia, and 
the south German states followed also. It was war be- 
tween France and a Germany united. 

In later years the Franco-German War, as it came to 
be called, appeared as the great landmark in the military 
annals of Europe in the nineteenth century. Seldom has 
any nation been so quickly triumphant as Prussia, and 
seldom has any people been humbled and overthrown 
as were the French. In after days nothing convinced men 
that German armies were unconquerable so much as 
memory of the victories of 1870. Not until the Battle 
of the Marne, forty-four years' later, was the legend of 
German invincibility disturbed; and not till the very end 
of the Great War could it be completely destroyed. Ac- 
tually, however, it is evident that the German military 
organization, with its system of universal training, had 
been developed with the most careful preparation for the 
contest, while the French military system had degenerated 
so far that France went into the struggle almost entirely 
unprepared. 

In 1870, among the undiscerning, France was still 
regarded as the foremost military power in Europe. Al- 
though a new law had just been passed to some extent 
adopting the Prussian system, yet her army, like the 
Austrian, continued to be based on the old principle of 
conscription and hiring of soldiers, which produced a 
standing army, sometimes strong and efficient, but without 
the great mass of reserves behind it that came from the 
Prussian method. The total force was less than 600,000 
men, little more than half of whom were available. The 
French did indeed have a better rifle than the Germans; 
and they were beginning to use the mitrailleuse, an early 
type of the machine or rapid-fire gun, but this weapon 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



135 



was not yet generally effective, nor was it destined to be 
a factor in war until the Germans themselves brought 
such large numbers into use in 1914. Furthermore, the 
entire French military organization at this time was 
suffering from decay and poor administration. Plans of 
mobilization had not been effectively worked out, and 
supplies and munitions were lacking. Actually, when the 
war began, France was able to move down to the frontier 
270,000 men with 925 cannon; and during the first period 
of the war, the first two or three months, not many more 
were ever put into the field. These forces were advanced 
quickly, in hope of taking the offensive, but there was 
considerable confusion, in which troops were moved with- 
out supplies and oflScers could not find their detachments. 
A slight offensive into Germany was indeed begun, but 
in face of the ominous and overwhelming movements 
of German troops it was at once abandoned; and the 
French troops prepared to try to repel the German in- 
vaders. 

On the other side all was different. The French leaders 
had mistakenly boasted that their army was ready "to 
the last button," but the Germans were completely ready. 
Everything apparently had been thought out before- 
hand, and every emergency foreseen. The entire German 
plan had been carefully prepared, and all details of the 
mobilization worked out in advance. It was well known 
that any forward movement by the French must take place 
along the railroad through Alsace and the railroad through 
Lorraine. With extraordinary accuracy the German staff 
predicted in its estimates just where the French would ar- 
rive by a certain time. Calculations about their own move- 
ments were made no less truly. There is a story, which 
may not be true, but which accurately reveals the state 
of affairs, that when Moltke was aroused at night and 
news of the declaration of war brought to him, he merely 
directed that a paper in a certain drawer be taken out and 



Her military 
system in 
decay 



The Ger- 
mans' 

preparations 
complete 



136 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The German 
forces ready 



First phase 
of the war, 
Julyl9-Sep- 
tember 1, 
1870 



the instructions contained in it followed; after which he 
turned over and slept again. At all events, while the 
French were beginning to discover how little ready they 
were for the war, into which they had gone so rashly and 
with such light heart, the German troops were brought 
down to the frontier with such speed and precision as 
had never been seen before. The Germans had, all told, a 
million well-trained troops. Of this number they moved 
forward nearly 500,000 with 1,584 guns, and had them 
across into France in a little more than two weeks. The 
way had been prepared by an army of spies, who did all 
they could to confuse the French movements, while they 
collected information for the Germans. 

Outnumbered two to one in men and in cannon, and 
fighting against an enemy as brave and resourceful as 
themselves, the French were overwhelmed from the start, 
so that there could be only one outcome of the struggle. 
The French were in two armies, one under the emperor 
in Lorraine, the other under MacMahon in Alsace. The 
advancing Germans fell upon them both, striving to keep 
them from uniting. On the same day they won two 
victories : at Worth in Alsace, and at Spicheren in Lorraine. 
The French fought bravely, though they were not led with 
aggressiveness or skill; but they were smothered by the 
superior artillery, and crushed by the masses of German 
infantry. Their northern army now retreated toward the 
fortress of Metz, while the southern one abandoned Alsace, 
the Germans following with little delay. August 18, 
the northern army, now commanded by Bazaine, was de- 
feated in the Battle of Gravelotte-Saint Privat, and took 
refuge within the fortifications of Metz. A smaller army 
was left to surround it, while all the rest of the German 
forces hastened after the other French command. Had 
it been possible to take into account strategic considera- 
tions solely, MacMahon 's army should have retreated 
upon Paris, delaying the war until it could be rein- 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



137 



forced. Political conditions, however, made this alto- 
gether inadvisable, since such retreat would almost cer- 
tainly mean the downfall of Napoleon's government. 
Therefore, in an evil hour, MacMahon turned in a forlorn 
attempt to relieve Metz, By a series of magnificent 
strategic moves Moltke presently drove him into the town 
of Sedan on the Meuse. There he was pushed back until 
his huddled troops were commanded by the German artil- 
lery brought up on to the surrounding hills. It was in vain 
that the French strove to break through the ring which so 
swiftly had been drawn about them. September 1, their 
entire army surrendered, and the emperor was among the 
captives. 

Actually France was now completely defeated, and, 
had the conditions of modern warfare been more clearly 
understood then, perhaps the French people might have 
abandoned the struggle. One of their armies had just 
surrendered. The other was surrounded; and the event 
was to prove that Bazaine's army could not escape, for 
just as the French soldiers were utterly unable to break 
through the encircling Germans at Sedan, so they were 
not able to do it at Metz. The German armament and 
equipment were so powerful that, as in the Great War, 
it was found almost impossible to break their lines when 
they occupied entrenched positions. Accordingly, the 
regular army of France was now lost, and she had no 
reserves of soldiers as had the Germans, because she had 
had nothing like the Prussian system of universal military 
training. None the less she had not lost her courage. 
In 1918, when the German armies were tottering, but not 
yet completely beaten, Germany did not prolong the 
struggle, but drew back her soldiers and surrendered her 
ships without any further attempt. In 1870 it was not so 
with the French. We see now that their cause was hope- 
less, but they made a gallant effort. The government of 
Napoleon III was overturned, and a republic established. 



Sedan 



France now 
defeated 



138 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Second 
phase: Sep- 
tember 2, 
187(>-March 
1, 1871 



The siege 
of Paris 



The new government sought peace; but it refused to cede 
a stone of the fortresses or a single inch of the soil of 
France, Bismarck had desired the friendship of Austria 
in 1866, and to Austria he had given easy terms. Now he 
was resolved to have conquests in France, and so the 
struggle continued. The German armies closed in upon 
Paris, while detachments spread their conquest wide about 
over the country. 

The effort made by the French people was amazing. 
They called out the manhood of the nation, and raised 
altogether 1,800,000 men. But they had armies only in 
name. The men were without military training, and were 
no match for the Germans. It was impossible to get enough 
capable officers and commanders, and most of the military 
stores and equipment had been lost. In vain did they try 
to purchase munitions and supplies abroad; they got 
inferior goods at outrageous prices, and there was not 
sufficient time to get enough of anything even so. Such 
was their energy that they did put large forces in the 
field, but during the terrible winter of 1870-1, while 
France suffered fearfully, and while the French soldiers 
endured prodigious losses, the new armies never gained 
against the inferior numbers of the German troops a single 
substantial success. It was not even necessary for the 
Germans to draw to any extent on their reserves remaining 
over the Rhine. They held the fortresses, Belfort, Strass- 
burg, Metz, and the fortified camp of Paris in grip of iron; 
and directed their principal effort to the taking of Paris. For 
four months that great city held out through a terrible siege, 
and finally a heavy bombardment. Provisions presently 
gave out and there was appalling suffering from the cold 
of winter and increasing famine. The old people and the 
young children died, as is ever the case. One by one, ex- 
cept for Belfort, the other fortresses surrendered. In 
Paris a great citizen army was raised, but it was ill-trained 
and insubordinate, and never able to break the lines of the 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 



139 



besiegers. Gradually all hope of deliverance from outside 
was abandoned. The Germans everywhere defeated and 
scattered the raw levies raised against them, and oc- 
cupied more and more of the country. They acted with 
much harshness and severity, attempting to discourage 
the formation of the new armies, shooting down as francs- 
tireurs those who tried to defend their country without 
uniform or part in regular military organization, taking 
hostages, imposing fines and ransoms, and burning some 
places in reprisal; not so hardly and so terribly as when 
they reentered France in 1914, but in manner that was 
ominous of the future. 

The Germans had really won the victory in the first 
two months. The heroic efforts of the French people pro- 
longed the agony for four months longer. Nothing in 
those four months altered the outcome, and they merely 
imposed additional suffering on the nation. And yet, 
this heroism was not, perhaps, useless, for it gave stern 
warning that these people held high their honor, and 
would not yield till the uttermost had been endured. The 
events of 1918 showed that the Germans might well be 
expected to submit after they had been badly defeated; 
but what happened in France in the cold, horrible first 
months of 1871 made it evident that France did not sur- 
render until her strength was annihilated and her people 
completely prostrate. 

January 28, 1871, Paris surrendered, and the war was 
presently brought to an end. The triumph of the Ger- 
mans was complete. By the Treaty of Frankfort (1871) 
France ceded Alsace and most of Lorraine, agreed to pay 
an indemnity of $1,000,000,000, and granted favorable 
commercial terms to her enemy. The results were that 
France lost for the next two generations the primacy in 
Europe she had so long enjoyed ; that her eastern frontier 
was now weaker, and Paris, the capital, left much more 
exposed to the Germans than before; that she was to 



The lesson 
of the rising 
of the 
French 
people 



The Treaty 
of Frank- 
fort 




6. ALSACE-LORRAINE 



140 



TRIUMPHS OF GERMANY 141 



crouch in fear before an all-powerful and arrogant Ger- 
many for the next forty years; that German manufactures, 
easily exported into France because of the favorable com- 
mercial terms now yielded, were to make it very difficult 
for France to enter upon great industrial development; 
and that Germany would thereafter feel invincible and 
superior and generally so behave. Moreover, the entire 
cost of the war, at the utmost, had been to the Germans 
not so much as $500,000,000. But they received double 
that sum, and would believe in the future that all their 
wars would bring conquests and the defeated enemy 
would always pay and reward them with booty. 

January 18, 1871, just before the surrender of Paris and 
the culmination of their triumph, William I, king of 
Prussia, was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of 
Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. The South German 
states were now willing to join the North German Con- 
federation, and so, form an empire, the Deutsches Reich. 
Thus was accomplished the task for which German patriots 
and statesmen had so long been striving. Fulfilment was 
possible now because of the unbounded enthusiasm of the 
German people in the midst of their common triumph, 
and because of the ardent spirit of nationalism which 
their efforts and victories called forth. Expectation of 
this was one of the principal reasons why Bismarck had 
hoped for the war. 



The down- 
fall of 
France 



Founding of 
the German 
Empire 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Austro-Prussian War: H. M. Hozier, The Seven Weeks* 
War, 2 vols. (1867). 

The Franco-German War, origin: Hans Delbriick Der 
Ur sprung des Krieges von 1870 (1893); Richard Fester, Brief e, 
Aktenstucke und Regesten zur Geschichte der Hohenzollernschen 
Tronkandidatur in Spanien, 2 vols. (1913); Due de Grammont, 
La France et la Prusse avant la Guerre (1872); Edmond Palat 
[Pierre Lehautcourt], Les Origines de la Guerre de 1870 (1912). 



142 EUROPE SJNCE 1870 

The War: Der Deutsch-Franzosische Krieg, 1870-71 (ed. by 
the Historical Section of the Great General Staff) 5 vols, and 
2 vols, of maps (1874-81) ; Arthur Chuquet, La Guerre de 1870- 
1871 (1895); L. Hahn, Der Krieg Deutschlands gegen Frankreich 
und die Griindung des Deutschen Kaiserreichs (1871), documents 
and oflScial utterances for the period 1867-71; C. de Mazade, 
La Guerre de France, 1870-1871, 2 vols. (1875), contains con- 
temporary documents: Hellmuth von Moltke, Geschichte des 
Deutsch-Franzosischen Krieges von 1870-71 (1891), trans, by 
Clara Bell and H. W. Fischer, 2 vols. (1891); E. Palat, Histoire 
de la Guerre de 1870, 7 vols. (1901-8), to the surrender of Metz, 
Guerre de 1870-1871, 2 vols. (1910); Krieg und Sieg, 1870-71, 
ed. by J. A. von Pflugk-Harttung (1895), trans, ed. by Major- 
General Sir F. Maurice (1914); A. Sorel, Histoire Diplomatique 
de la Guerre Franco-Allemande, 2 vols. (1875), based on accounts 
of participants. 

Special studies on the military operations: Fritz Honig, Der 
Volkskrieg an der Loire im Herbst 1870, 8 vols. (1893-7); George 
Hooper, The Campaign of Sedan (1914). Also E. Palat, Biblio- 
graphie Generale de la Guerre de 1870-1871 (1896). 

The Treaty of Frankfort : Jules Favre, Le Gouvernement de la 
Defense Nationals, 1871-1872, 3 vols. (1871-5); G. May, Le 
Traits de Francfort (1909), best, based on studies in the ar- 
chives. 

Contemporary accounts: Dr. Moritz Busch, Bismarck in the 
Franco-German War, 1870-1871, authorized trans., 2 vols (1879); 
Eduard Engel, Kaiser Friedrichs Tagebuch (1919) ; Lord Augus- 
tus IjoHus, Diplomatic Reminiscences, 1862-1879, 2 vols. (1894); 
Lord Newton, Lord Lyons, a Record of British Diplomacy, 2 vols. 
(1913), the British ambassador to France during the period of 
the Franco-German War; E. B. Washburn, Recollections of a 
Minister to France, 1869-1877, 2 vols. (1883), the American 
minister. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE GROWTH OF THE NEW GERMAN 
EMPIRE 

Die deutsche Nation ist trotz ihrer alten Geschichte das jUngste unter 
den grossen Volkern Westeuropas. 

Helnrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte ini Neuzehn- 
ten Jahrhundert (1879), i. 1. 

Selten oder niemals hat ein Land in so kurzer Zeit einen so gewal- 
tigen wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung erlebt wie das Deutsche Reich 
in der Epoche vom Frankfurter Frieden bis zum Ausbruch des 
Weltkrieges. . . . Aus dem armen deutschen Lande ist ein 
reiches Land geworden. . . . Das Volk der Denker, Dichter und 
Krieger ist zu einem Kaufmanns- und Handelsvolk ersten Ranges 
geworden, Wo sind die Zeiten, wo unser Schiller nur zwei gewal- 
tige Nationen ringen sah um der Welt alleinigen Besitz, den 
Franken . . . und den Briten. . . ? 

riJRST VON BiJLOW, Deutsche Politik (ed. 1917), pp. 291, 292. 

To THE people of the new German Empire the period Greatness of 
following their great military triumphs brought unpar- the German 
alleled prosperity and power. The years from 1871 to Empire 
1914 were like a mighty epic, or a period of triumph, 
grander and more splendid in time's progress. Such in- 
crease had probably never been seen anywhere else before. 
In modern times it was rivalled only by the rise of Japan 
and the growth of the United States. Sometimes there 
comes in a people's life vast quickening of spirit and hope, 
when it seems that youth will never depart, and boundless 
confidence and boundless ambition accompany limitless 
strength. Such a time had come to Italian communities 
in the days of the Renaissance; Englishmen had it under 
Elizabeth and Pitt; Frenchmen, in the French Revolution. 
It came to Germans after 1870. In industry, in commerce, 
in population, in wealth, and in power they went forward 

143 



144 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Causes of 
success 



Government 
of the 
Empire 



Ministerial 
government 



with amazing strides, surpassing the greatest things that 
their legends related of old. In time they believed that 
before them lay the destiny of men who would one day 
rule all the world. 

This success came from many causes: from the union 
at last achieved, from the splendid qualities of the people 
themselves, from the excellence of their educational sys- 
tem, from altered conditions respecting industry and 
trade which were working now in their favor, and from 
the German genius for organization which was applied 
to winning triumphs in peace as it had just been used to 
achieve victory in war. 

Bismarck had succeeded where a long line of leaders 
had failed: there was a great, united Germany now with 
a strong central government. The system established 
was a very interesting one. It had the form of constitu- 
tional government with power based upon representatives 
of the people; but in reality it was devised to retain act- 
ual power for the upper class supporting an autocratic 
ruler at the top. 

Like most nineteenth-century constitutions in Europe, 
the constitution of the Deutsches Reich was modelled after 
the English system. The British cabinet system — in which 
an executive, composed of a prime minister and other 
ministers of the cabinet, depends entirely upon the sup- 
port of the majority of representatives of the people in the 
legislative body, the House of Commons — does actually 
give a government which is representative of the people, 
controlled by them, and more and more democratic in 
character. Generally speaking, wherever the cabinet sys- 
tem prevails in any form, the test of the government be- 
ing controlled by the people is that the executive shall 
depend upon support of the majority of representatives 
elected by the voters; and that these representatives 
shall really make the laws, grant the taxes, and control 
the spending of public money. 



II 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



145 



In respect of these things it is interesting to study the 
government of the German Empire established in 1871. 
This government had been taken over, substantially, from 
the preceding North German Confederation, established 
in 1867. The German Empire was a federation con- 
sisting of twenty-five states and the Reichsland, Alsace- 
Lorraine. It was ruled by the Kaiser (emperor) , who was 
the King of Prussia, the Bundesrath (council of the Federa- 
tion), and the Reichstag (representative assembly of the 
Empire) . The only part of this system which was directly 
or indirectly controlled by the people was the Reichstag. 
For the most part the constitution was so arranged as to 
concentrate a great deal of all the power in the hands of the 
kaiser. 

The Reichstag, like the British House of Commons or 
the American House of Representatives, was elected by 
the voters — in Germany the men of twenty-five years and 
older. Its functions were to assist in making the laws 
and to pass appropriations of money. But it was defective 
in its representation and it had not very much real power. 
From 1871 to the time of the Great War there was no re- 
apportionment of representation as population shifted 
from one district to another, notably from country to the 
cities. Hence, in course of time, conservative, agricultural 
East Prussia, one of the strongholds of the Junkers, had 
more than three times as much representation as some 
of the liberal industrial centers, and there were as scandal- 
ous inequalities in representation as had prevailed in 
England before the time of electoral reform. But more 
important than this was the fact that appropriations of 
money were often made by the Reichstag for periods 
of years, so that the representatives of the voters lost much 
of the power which comes from steady control of the 
purse. Moreover, no important piece of legislation could 
be passed without the Bundesrath' s consent. 

The Bundesrath was not, properly speaking, an upper 



The German 

system 



The Reichs- 
tag 



Inequalities 
in represen- 
tation 



146 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Bun- 
desrath 



The govern- 
ment of 
Prussia 



house of the legislature, and had little resemblance to the 
American Senate or the British House of Lords. It was 
composed at first of 58, and later on of 61, members sent 
by the various states of the Federation. The delegates 
represented not the people but the rulers and governments 
of these states; they were bound to vote in accordance 
with instructions given by the governments; and they 
acted really as ambassadors of the princes who sent them. 
In no way did these members depend upon German voters ; 
they carried out the policies of the rulers and upper classes 
of the German states. No law could be passed without 
the assent of the Bundesrath, and as laws usually originated 
there, the legislative power of the Empire was to be found 
in the Bundesrath, not in the Reichstag. But as Prussia 
could always control enough votes in the Bundesrath to 
prevent the passage of a measure not approved by her, gov- 
ernment was really in the keeping of Prussia, which had, 
indeed, three fifths of the population and two thirds of the 
territory of the Empire. 

The smaller states in the west and the south were less 
military and more liberal; Prussia had the most back- 
ward government in the Empire. The legislative power 
was vested in the Landtag (assembly), of two chambers 
or houses. The upper consisted of princes and others 
appointed by the king as hereditary members or for life. 
The lower contained members elected by the voters. 
The upper house represented entirely the upper class and 
the king, and, because of a curious contrivance, the 
lower house represented them almost as completely. 
This was brought about by the famous three-class sys- 
tem of voting. "The primary voters," said the Prussian 
Constitution of 1850, "shall be divided into three classes 
in proportion to the amount of direct taxes they pay, 
and in such a manner that each class shall represent a 
third of the sum total of the taxes paid by the primary 
voters." The result of this was that two thirds of the 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



147 



representation and the control of the lower house were 
given to one sixth of the voters, who composed the upper 
and wealthy class. In Berlin it came to be that a rich 
man's vote was worth the votes of fifty poor ones. More- 
over, the king of Prussia had an absolute veto upon legisla- 
tion, and in practice initiated such laws as were passed. 
That is to say, the government of Prussia, which in effect 
largely controlled the government of the Empire, was 
in the hands of the king of Prussia and the upper class. 
This class was made up of the industrial magnates 
and especially of the nobles and great landowners, the 
Junkers. 

The Junkers were among the most aristocratic and con- 
servative people in Europe, exceedingly tenacious of their 
privileges of class and high position. In Prussia and in 
other parts of the Empire they constituted an upper class 
apart from the people, having the social superiority of the 
aristocracy in England, but with much more real influence 
and power. If they could retain their privileges, they 
would support the king without flinching. Accordingly, 
in last resort the real power in the government of Prussia 
was in the hands of the king, and the real government of 
the Empire was also in his hands as emperor. The Prus- 
sian Constitution implied the doctrine of Divine Right, 
and even as late as the years before the Great War the 
emperor asserted this. "Looking upon myself as the 
instrument of the Lord," he said at Konigsberg, in 1910: 
"without regard to contemporary opinions and intention, 
I go my way." He possessed the executive power, he 
appointed the important officials, he generally could 
control the Bundesrath. And his ministers were not 
responsible to the Reichstag. In Great Britain, opposi- 
tion of a majority in the House of Commons would destroy 
the prime minister's power, but just after the Zabern 
Affair (1913), adverse debates and adverse votes affected 
the chancellor's position not at all. Indeed, he told the 



Junkers 
and Kaiser 



Divine 
Right in 
Prussia 



148 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Sovereigns 
and minis- 
ters 



William I, 
1871-1888 



members of the Reichstag explicitly then that he was 
responsible to the emperor, not to them. 

In France and in England, where ministries wield the 
executive power, it is necessary to know something about 
the character and aspirations of the principal ministers, 
while the king of England, even the president of France, 
has usually been of far less importance for a comprehension 
of affairs. On the other hand, in Germany and in Russia 
an understanding of the aims and the character of the 
emperors is all important; as is, to be sure, understanding 
the character and intentions of the president in studying 
the history of the United States. In the United States 
the president's power is limited very definitely by a liberal 
constitution, and in Russia the tsar was surrounded 
and even controlled by a vast bureaucratic system, or 
system of important officials whose cooperation was 
nearly indispensable; but in the German Empire, the 
great officials who assisted the kaiser were strictly sub- 
ordinate to him. 

In 1871, William I,already for ten years king of Prussia, 
became first emperor of the new state. He ruled until 
1888. He was a tall and stately man, and the portraits 
that were painted of him recalled to his subjects the 
strong German heroes of old. He was an elderly man 
when he came to Prussia's throne, already conservative 
with age. Always he had been slow, steady, and strong, 
not one to go after new matters, or sympathize with 
reform or ideas of other people, yet just and honorable 
as he saw things. He had served against Napoleon in 
the War of Liberation, and all through his life he was fond 
of his army and delighted in military things. In politics 
the newer ideas never appealed to him at all. He was 
filled with the old Prussian conception of the high position 
of kings, and believed in divine right of monarchs as thor- 
oughly as the rulers of a hundred years before. "The 
kings of Prussia receive their crowns from God," he said, 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



149 



when he came to the throne. The gigantic success of 
Germany during his years threw glamor about his person 
and added to the prestige of the crown. His character 
did not alter, nor in later years did he tend any more to 
follow the changing principles of his time. He was a good 
judge of councillors, and where he gave his confidence 
he gave loyal and faithful support. Actually during his 
reign the destinies of the Empire were guided by his 
trusted servant Bismarck, whose ideas about government 
were always much like his own. 

During the long, splendid reign of William I, then, 
there could be little tendency toward a real parliamentary 
system of government or greater control by the people. It 
seemed that this might come about in the time of his son, 
Frederick III, who disliked Bismarck, and was disposed 
to alter the Prussian conception of kingship. He did, 
indeed, favor parliamentary control, which he may have 
come to admire partly through the influence of his wife, 
who was a daughter of Queen Victoria of England. But 
he had long been suffering from cancer in the throat, and 
when at last, in 1888, he came to the throne, he reigned 
only three months, and his ideas left no permanent trace. 

He was followed by the third and last of the sovereigns 
of the German Empire, William II. William had been a 
great admirer of Bismarck and that leader's system, and 
he cherished the olden ideas. "The king's will is the 
supreme law," he declared on one occasion. Strong in 
mind, vigorous and aggressive, he tried to take part in 
all things. It is difficult to estimate his ability, and his 
character remains an enigma. So brilliant was his success 
for a while that some considered him a genius, while there 
were not a few in the meantime who whispered that he 
was headstrong, irresponsible, and rash. There can be no 
doubt, however, that with respect to ideas of government, 
he looked back to the past more than he regarded the pres- 
ent. Like his grandfather he tolerated the Reichstag, 



Frederick 
m, 1888 



William II, 
1888-1918 



150 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The spirit of 
the past 



Origin of the 

German 

system 



Germany 
once weak 
and helpless 



but considered the ministers as his ministers, and was 
resolved to abate his prerogative not a bit. He loved to 
conceive of himself as medieval lord or strong knight, 
and a heroic statue represented him as a crusader of the 
Middle Ages. It is not surprising, then, that neither 
during the short time he remained under the influence of 
Bismarck, nor afterward during the much longer period 
when he himself governed, was there any important change 
in the German Constitution, or any change in the spirit 
of administering it, which tended to bring greater partici- 
pation or control by the German people. 

It must be remembered that such explanation of the 
German Government is from the point of view generally 
taken in English-speaking coimtries, where a different 
system, of real control by representatives of the people, 
has long prevailed, is much revered, and is assumed to be 
right. It must be remembered that the German system 
arose in the midst of circumstances very different from 
those which prevailed in England and the United States. 
The English-speaking peoples, protected by the sea, 
of which they had command, were generally safe from 
attacks and interference by their foes. In this favorable 
condition slowly, generation after generation, they devel- 
oped self-government controlled by the people, gradually 
taking away from the king the power which once he had 
held. It was very different in Germany, especially in Prus- 
sia. Prussia had no natural frontiers to protect her; she was 
not made safe by waters which her foes could not cross. 
For ages Germany was despised by her enemies because 
she was weak and divided. In the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries she was ravaged by destructive wars, 
and the German people endured almost everything that 
invading armies and lawless soldiery could inflict. Small 
wonder then that they should come at last to desire above 
all things the strength which comes from union, and prize 
much more the security which a strong ruler can give 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



151 



than a system of parliamentary self-government. It had 
been so in France before the Hundred Years War was over, 
and in England after the troubles of the fifteenth century. 
In both countries strong centralized and despotic govern- 
ment arose and flourished for a long time, and Divine Right 
was cherished by many of the people. Evil conditions 
had continued longer in Germany, and the consequences 
had persisted longer. Accordingly, most Germans looked 
at these things the old way. There were many who de- 
sired the greater liberalization of their government, and 
hoped that soon there might be a parliamentary system 
more like that of England, with ministers responsible to 
the will of the people; but, on the other hand, there were a 
great many who declared that the German system was 
not only better for the German people but that it was 
really superior to any other. They said that the personal 
liberty of the Anglo-Saxon peoples was only license; 
that parliamentary control could never make Germany 
so strong or well fitted for the greatness before her as the 
strong executive control which she had; that while 
their government might be "autocratic," it was far more 
efficient than the "democratic" systems of America and 
Britain; and that it was able to give to its subjects far 
greater happiness and good. Truly they did not rule 
themselves, being governed from the top, but they were 
governed well and were better off, so they said, than any 
other people in the world. Many things were forbidden 
(verboten), but this was only restricting the behavior 
of individuals for the greater good of them all. Because 
all this was so sincerely maintained, and was true as the 
Germans looked at it, the Great War of 1914 came to be 
partly a struggle between democracy and the older, more 
autocratic systems. 

It should be said that in one respect the Germans un- 
doubtedly had more success than Americans, though not 
more than the British. The government of their cities 



Weakness 
and anarchy 
make strong 
government 
desired 



Alleged ex- 
cellence of 
the German 
system 



Excellent 
municipal 
government 



152 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Economic 
advance 



Agriculture 



was clean, efficient, and well-administered, as British 
municipal government came to be. It is well known that 
the people of the United States have been far less success- 
ful; and that especially since the Civil War the govern- 
ment of their cities has all too frequently been character- 
ized by poor management, corruption, graft, and wasting 
of public money. 

The unification of Germany brought wonderful pros- 
perity, and this strengthened and justified the government 
that had been set up. Seldom has such success ever 
come to any people. It is customary to aflfirm that the 
story may be better told by statistics than any other way; 
and that is true, except that statistics are not apt to make 
much impression. Suffice it to say that after the Zoll- 
verein was formed, and especially after the North German 
Confederation and the Empire, in almost every form of 
endeavor the German people went forward so far that it 
seemed at last only a matter of time when they would 
be first in whatever they attempted. 

In the middle of the nineteenth century Germany was 
mainly an agricultural country. For most people, living 
was hard, since the soil, unlike that of America or France, 
was poor. Accordingly, in spite of the industry of the 
people, the wealth of the country was low. All through 
the following period, however, the most careful fertilizing 
and the best methods that science had devised were 
applied, so that as time went on the yields were increased. 
Moreover, Germany adopting a system which England had 
abandoned with the repeal of the Corn Laws, imposed 
protective duties to aid the agricultural classes. This 
was done not only because of the political influence of the 
Junkers, the great landed proprietors, but because the 
government desired that the country should continue to 
raise as much of its food as could be. The result was well 
seen when the Great War came. At that time England 
produced so little of the food eaten by her people that a 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



153 



blockade would have starved her into surrender in a few 
months; but Germany, blockaded though she was, held 
out for more than four years. 

Far more important was industrial growth. In the 
second half of the nineteenth century the German people 
left their hamlets and towns, and went to factories in the 
cities. These urban communities increased so wondrously 
that whereas in 1871 half of the population had been 
engaged in agriculture, in 1914 rural work kept less than 
a third. Berlin grew as fast as Chicago in the New World, 
and cities that had been quiet places or asleep since the 
Thirty Years' War woke up and expanded and became 
vast emporiums in a lifetime. Up and down the valley 
of the Rhine, in Saxony, and central Prussia there were 
huge factories and forests of chimneys as in central 
England, or in Pittsburgh, or Detroit. 

The Germans were fortunate in having the basis of 
great industrial development in huge stores of coal and 
iron. After 1871 coal production was enormously in- 
creased. In 1905, when Great Britain, the principal 
coal-producing country after the United States, mined 
236,000,000 tons, Germany already produced 173,000,000. 
Before the Franco-Prussian War the German states had 
no large supply of iron ore; but in Lorraine the new Em- 
pire acquired a part of the Briey Basin, the greatest de- 
posit of ore in Europe. The deposit which is "low-grade " 
was not deemed very valuable until the later discovery of 
a new process of extraction of iron from the ore. There- 
after the German Empire drew from the Lorraine fields 
the greater part of its supply, some 4,870,000 metric tons 
out of 7,000,000, in 1910. It was afterward said, with 
some reason, perhaps, that had the Germans realized the 
value of this possession, they would have taken all of it 
when they imposed their terms on France in the Treaty of 
Frankfort. At all events, Germany came to be the greatest 
producer, excepting only the United States, of pig-iron and 



Industrial 
growth 



Coal and 
iron 



154 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Causes of 
industrial 
success 



Application 
of science to 
industry 



steel; and although it was not understood by many until 
later, this leadership was to make possible her enormous 
preponderance in the next great war fought in Europe. 

The Germans entered upon their industrial revolution 
later than England or France. Thus they could profit 
by the experience of those who had gone before. It was 
soon found, moreover, that the genius of the German with 
his aptitude for organization and study of details was 
admirably adapted for the large-scale production of the 
later stages of the Industrial Revolution. Starting lower 
down than their more fortunate rivals, the German work- 
men were accustomed to a lower standard of living and 
so worked for lower wages; while habits of the past still 
made them willing to work industriously for longer hours. 
Furthermore, the rapidly increasing population, which 
had previously been emigrating to America and other 
places, was now absorbed in the enlarging industry and 
furnished a constant and abundant supply of labor; while 
the excellent system of education, particularly of technical 
instruction, made these workmen able to sustain any 
competition. In no other country was there such im- 
mense scientific activity and progress, and especially such 
successful adaptation of science to practical uses. The 
Germans made few brilliant discoveries, but by enormous 
industry and patient research they immensely extended 
scientific knowledge and then used it in furthering their 
industry and arts. Soon German goods were being 
sold all over the world. At first, just as with Japanese 
goods now, German manufactures were sold from their 
cheapness rather than their worth, but presently they 
were so much improved that their reputation was every- 
where known. The result of this was that Germany, once 
low in the industrial scale, rose until she had passed by 
France and Great Britain, and finally had exceeded every 
one of her rivals save only the United States. 

The rising industry was protected by high customs 






THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



155 



duties. This device had been common in the Middle 
Ages and later, and was well known in the United States. 
England somewhat earlier had adopted the policy of free 
trade; but Bismarck was convinced that lack of regulation, 
laissez-faire, was wrong, and that industry and commerce 
should be regulated and fostered by the State. In 1879 
he abandoned free trade and caused the adoption of a 
protective tariff. The result was tremendous stimula- 
tion of all the industries of the Empire. 

Along with this industrial expansion went enormous 
increase in commerce. Some Germans in the Middle Ages 
had been great mariners and merchants, and for a long 
time the masters of the Hanseatic League were renowned. 
But with the discovery of America and the change of 
trade routes and the decline of German power all of this 
completely disappeared. In the early part of the nine- 
teenth century German ships were seldom seen in foreign 
ports. After the middle of the century came a change. 
In the year when the Empire was founded there were only 
a million tons of German shipping, but this had doubled 
by 1900, and the increase was more rapid thereafter. A 
vast fleet of ships was created, some of them among the 
finest in the world; and the German mercantile marine 
everywhere competed for passenger business and carrying 
of freight. The government assisted this development by 
subsidies and state supervision. After 1900 the Hamburg- 
America and the North German Lloyd steamship compa- 
nies had few rivals anywhere in the world. Hamburg 
was the greatest seaport on the Continent. From a 
lowly position Germany had in shipping and commerce 
passed all of her competitors except England. 

As a consequence of this industrial and commercial 
development immense quantities of German goods were 
sold all over the world. Gradually the Russian market 
came largely under German control, great progress was 
made in South America, and there was no part of the world 



Protection 



Commercial 
development 



Trade 
expansion 



156 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



study of 
markets and 
customers 
abroad 



The German 
Government 
and trade 



National 
wealth 



where German merchants and traders were not seen. 
Much ingenuity and skill were shown in the opening of 
new markets. They entered the competition late, when 
such rivals as the English had had a long start, had long 
enjoyed monopoly of some of the markets, and had made 
their names widely known. The Germans now not only 
tried to make cheaper goods, and sometimes better goods, 
but they took great pains to study their customers* 
desires and then suit their wishes. The attitude of the 
English and others was that they had good wares to sell, 
the customer might buy or not as he chose, but if he did 
purchase he must buy what the manufacturer pleased to 
make. The Germans never insisted upon this. To every 
part of the world they sent commercial representatives 
to study the markets, find what customers wanted, and 
offer them easy terms. As the most enterprising young 
men of Britain went out to govern or work in the colonial 
possessions, so from Germany they went forth to reside 
in other countries, learn the language of the inhabitants, 
their customs and wishes, and establish business con- 
nections with them. 

Not all the success that followed came merely from 
the care of German merchants and their representatives 
abroad. Not a little of it was because the German Govern- 
ment constantly lent its powerful assistance to forwarding 
and increasing German trade. Some of the methods by 
which this was accomplished afterward seemed insidious 
and unfair, and not unlike those by which "trusts" were 
built up in the United States. At a later time these 
methods brought hostility and condemnation such as 
attacked "big business" in the United States. 

This making and selling of goods was accompanied by 
tremendous growth in population and wealth. Before 
the Empire the Germans were a poor people. The wealthy 
states were Great Britain and France, with the United 
States of America rising up like a giant and presently 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



157 



surpassing them both. But the two generations after 
1871 saw amazing progress. An increasing population of 
industrious and highly intelligent people, urged forward 
by aggressive leaders, and succeeding in business, ac- 
cumulated huge stores of wealth and rapidly passed older 
rivals. Figures representing national wealth cannot 
possibly be very exact, and, indeed, they are mere esti- 
mates which have to be constantly changed as circum- 
stances alter; but just before the Great War it was 
believed that the wealth of France was perhaps more than 
50 billion dollars, that of Great Britain between 80 and 
90, that of the German Empire between 80 and 90, that of 
the United States about 200 billions. By that time it was 
believed that Germany had passed every rival except the 
United States, though she always remained at immeasur- 
able distance behind that wealthy and fortunate country. 
Marvellous achievement and increasing wealth were 
partly the cause and partly the result of increase in number 
of people. This was, indeed, one of the most striking 
and important things in Europe in the nineteenth century. 
In 1816 there were within the limits of the present German 
Empire, 24,000,000 people. By 1837 the number had 
risen to 31,000,000; the German Empire began in 1871 
with 41,000,000; by 1890 there were 49,000,000; in 1900, 
56,000,000; in 1910, 65,000,000; and in 1914 the number 
was believed to be little short of 70,000,000. By that time 
the increase was nearly a million a year. During the 
nineteenth century the population of Great Britain had 
risen from 10,500,000 to 36,000,000; that of France 
from 27,000,000 to barely 40,000,000. At the beginning 
of that century France had been the most populous of the 
highly civilized states of Europe, but just before the war 
she had been so far displaced that Germany had nearly 
twice as many people. The results were both good and 
bad. This increase made Germany more powerful and 
it also made her richer, since it constantly gave her a 



Immense 
economic 
progress 



Growth of 
population 



Germany 

passes 
France 



158 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Belief that 
more terri- 
tory was 
needed 



Contest with 
the Church 



larger number of workingmen who labored and produced 
goods and wealth. The country seemed well able to 
support them. Once there had been a large emigration of 
Germans to other places, but this had altogether come to 
an end, and almost all her people now found employment 
within their own country. None the less, it was increas- 
ingly apparent that so large a number, as was the case 
with England, could not be fed from the Fatherland's 
agricultural resources, and that they could be maintained 
only so long as Germany made goods which she was able 
to sell abroad. As time went on this was becoming more 
difficult, and it would be harder and harder as the number 
of people increased. England had in her empire vast 
quantities of raw materials, and in her colonies a great 
market also. With Germany this was not the case. Hence, 
as will be seen, there was increasing belief that she must 
have more territory to accommodate her enlarging popula- 
tion, that she required colonies, and ought to have her 
own sources of supply of raw materials. And in the 
minds of some there gradually developed the feeling that 
it was very wrong for Germany not to have what they 
thought she ought to possess, that she had been deprived 
of chance to obtain them by the wickedness of rivals, 
and that it was most proper for Germany to take from 
them whatever she wanted whenever she could. 

The first of the great domestic problems which con- 
fronted the new Empire was a struggle with the Catholics 
under its jurisdiction. The Reformation had made 
Germany Protestant, but the Counter-Reformation won 
many of the people back to the older faith, and a little 
later the result of the Thirty Years War left the German 
people partly in Protestant and partly in Catholic states. 
After 1648 there was little trouble about religion, since 
with respect to religion the different states went their own 
way, unhampered by the weak government of the Holy 
Roman Empire which bound them together so loosely. 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



159 



But the Empire founded in 1871 bound firmly together 
Protestant north Germany and the Cathohcs of the Rhine 
and the south, and brought them all under a strong 
central power. It is said that Bismarck wished to assert 
the supremacy of the State's power over the Church, and 
desired an occasion to do this. The occasion was ready at 
hand. In 1870 the Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine 
that the pope, speaking ex cathedra, or in his capacity of 
pontiff, was infallible, not able to err. This doctrine, so 
counter to many of the tendencies of the time, was not 
assented to by the German bishops at the Council, and, 
indeed, they withdrew from the Council. But, as is us- 
ually the case in the strongly organized Catholic Church, 
the dissenters soon adopted that which their Church had 
received, though some German Catholics, including the 
celebrated theologian. Doctor Dollinger, refused to ac- 
cede. Declining merely the new doctrine, they held, as 
they said, to the old doctrines of the Catholic faith; and 
so they were known as Old Catholics. Dollinger and his 
associates were excommunicated; they were attacked by 
the orthodox Catholic clergy, deprived of positions, and 
denied participation in the rites of the Church. They 
appealed to the government for protection and at this 
point Bismarck intervened. It seemed to him and to 
others that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility implied 
superiority of the Church over the State, and he desired 
to assert the supremacy of the State. Accordingly, a 
religious conflict began, famous then and since as the Kul- 
inrkanipf (struggle for civilization). Strong measures 
were taken: religious orders were forbidden to teach, and 
Jesuits were expelled from Germany. Then in theFalk 
Laws, passed in Prussia, 1873-5, the State was given 
control over the education and appointment of clergy, and 
some control over the dismissal of priests; a law was 
passed making civil marriage compulsory ; and all religious 
orders were suppressed. 



The new 
Empire and 
the Roman 
Catholics 



The Kultur- 
kaznpf 



160 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Bismarck 
retreats 



The Center 

(Catholic) 
Party 



A bitter conflict ensued. Catholics protested; the 
pope declared the laws of no effect; the clergy refused 
to obey them and were supported by the strict Catholics 
in their congregations. Those who disobeyed were 
punished by fine and imprisonment, and the most re- 
calcitrant were expelled from the country. Soon many 
bishoprics were vacant; everywhere churches were closed 
and religious services suspended; and presently there 
was the trouble and disturbance of life that had used 
to follow conflict between Church and State in the Middle 
Ages. In medieval times the Church had usually been 
the victor, but after the rise of national feeling in states 
this had generally not been the case. Now, however, 
the contest was bitter and prolonged. "We shall not go 
to Canossa," said Bismarck, recalling the old-time humilia- 
tion of the Emperor Henry IV by Pope Gregory VII. But 
Bismarck could not win complete triumph. Under per- 
secution the Catholics rallied and strengthened their 
resistance. Already in 1871 a Catholic Party had been 
organized, and, as the Party of the Center, had become 
an important factor in the Reichstag. Now it became 
the largest group in that body. By 1878 it was evident 
that the policy of sternness was accomplishing little. Bis- 
marck had antagonized one of the most conservative 
elements in the Empire, and now he needed the assistance 
of conservatives against what seemed to him the rising 
tide of socialist and radical agitation. Accordingly, most 
of the anti-clerical laws were repealed, though civil mar- 
riage and state regulation of schools were retained. By 
1887 the conflict was at an end, the Catholic Party aban- 
doned opposition and gave Bismarck the support which 
he needed for a policy which it approved. The State 
had asserted its supremacy, but found it wise not to make 
much use of its power. After that time the Center Party, 
the strongest and most solid in the Empire, remained on 
guard, ever watchful of its own peculiar interests. 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



161 



The conflict to which Bismarck and German conserva- 
tives now turned was with sociaHsm which had lately been 
making rapid progress. Socialism had been widely 
taught in Germany before the Empire was made, and the 
socialists elected two members to the first Reichstag which 
was chosen. Thereafter it grew steadily in importance, 
attracting more and more attention as the years passed, 
because of teachings which most people regarded as 
harmful and wild. Socialists and their leaders were 
considered not only dangerous but unpatriotic. These 
were the first glorious years of the new Empire, when the 
hearts of Germans were aglow with patriotism and with 
pride at what the Fatherland had wrought. Liebknecht 
and Bebel and others had not only opposed the founding 
of the North German Confederation but also of the Em- 
pire, the war with France, and the taking of Alsace- 
Lorraine. ■ They cared not for military glory and greatness 
of dominion but for the rise and betterment of men and 
women. They had no admiration for Bismarck or Moltke 
and not much for the emperor and his court. As these 
radicals got to be better known they became more hated 
and feared. Especially the governing and conservative 
classes dreaded the undoing of the great work which had 
just been accomplished. The emperor looked upon 
socialists as enemies of himself, and Bismarck longed for 
a chance to repress them completely. It was largely for 
this reason, because he regarded socialists as more dan- 
gerous than clericals, that he brought the Kulturkampf 
to an end. The opportunity for action, which he sought, 
came in 1878, when in sw^ift succession two attempts to 
assassinate William were made by socialist adherents. 
Socialists denounced these deeds and disclaimed all re- 
sponsibility for them; but there was a great wave of 
indignation and anger, and it seemed that the time was 
at hand for crushing socialism in Germany completely. 

New elections were held, and a Reichstag was returned 



Socialism in 
the German 
Empire 



Socialists 
feared and 
disliked 



162 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Repression 
of the social- 
ists 



State social- 
ism 



ready to proceed to extremities. Bismarck now entered 
upon another campaign of persecution and repression 
like that against the Catholics, from which he was just 
drawing back. In 1878 a drastic law forbade all publica- 
tions, all gatherings, all associations having "socialistic 
tendencies." Martial law might be used, so that the 
government could easily get rid of socialists after remov- 
ing from them the protection of the civil courts. This 
legislation was temporary, but it was reenacted and re- 
mained in force until 1890. During that time it was 
sternly applied, a great number of socialist publications 
were stopped, and a great many socialists imprisoned or 
expelled from the country. But again this whole policy 
of repression was a failure. Under persecution, leaders 
and their disciples became bolder and more active; and 
their doctrines, brought to the attention of more people 
because of the very measures taken against them, won 
many new converts. The Socialist Party in this time 
of degradation became greater than ever before; by 1890 
it had grown to be thrice as large as in the year when the 
persecution began. It was now so clear that the policy 
of persecution was a failure that the repressive measures 
were dropped. In this again Bismarck had partly failed. 
But he was largely successful when he employed another 
method against them. He himself became one of the 
foremost leaders in social reform in Europe, and undertook 
to have the State do all of what he thought best in that 
which the socialists were striving to bring about. In effect 
he went further than any modern statesman had gone in 
reviving state regulation of economic and industrial con- 
ditions, so customary in Europe some centuries before. 
Thus he established "state socialism" and so left the 
socialists with less to fight for. He and the emperor 
strongly believed that the best interests of the State lay 
in advancing the welfare of the working class, and that 
the State should interest itself more than previously in 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



163 



assisting such of its citizens as needed help. "Give the 
workingman the right to employment," said Bismarck, 
"assure him care when he is sick, and maintenance when 
he is old." If the workers understood that the govern- 
ment was interested in their welfare they would cease to 
go after socialist leaders. The measures which Bismarck 
proposed encountered almost as much opposition as, thirty 
years later, the social reforms of Lloyd George in Eng- 
land. 

Conservatives were alarmed at such innovations, and 
socialists denounced them as not touching the root of the 
evils which they promised to cure. Gradually, however, 
the programme was carried through. In 1883 a Sickness 
Insurance Law was passed, the employer to pay a part 
and the employee a larger part of the premiums necessary 
to establish the fund. In 1884 and 1885 Accident In- 
surance Laws were passed, the employer to insure all his 
employees entirely at his own expense. In 1889 came an 
Old Age Insurance Law, the premiums to be paid by the 
employers, the employees, and the State. 

This legislation was revolutionary in the nineteenth 
century. It was afterward widely studied, and was 
being more and more followed before the Great War 
temporarily put an end to social amendment. There can 
be no doubt that in Germany it had great success. Not 
that the Socialist Party disappeared in consequence. After 
1890 that party constantly increased the number of its 
adherents, and after 1898 was much the largest party in 
the Empire. By that time it had drawn to itself most of 
the artisans and toilers in the cities, and had it not been 
for the old and unequal apportionment of representatives, 
the socialists would have had a still greater number of 
members in the Reichstag. Nevertheless, there can be no 
doubt that by 1914 a great many Germans regarded them- 
selves as better taken care of by their government than 
any other people in the world; and it is probably true 



Bismarck 
on State 
supervision 
and assist- 
ance 



Government 
and people 
in the Ger- 
man Empire 



164 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Care of the 
people by 
the gov- 
ernment 



Slow prog- 
ress of 
democracy 
in the Em- 
pire 



that nowhere else had the State been so successful in 
getting rid of the worst forms of misery and distress. 
There were many poor people in Germany, toiling for 
scanty wages and working for very long hours, but no- 
where in the Empire such fearful poverty and physical 
deterioration as visitors could see in the slums of the 
English cities, or in the worst quarters of cities in the 
United States. The German Government was guar- 
anteeing a certain minimum to its people, to make them 
content, and providing that the State might not be weak- 
ened by losing their services. All this contributed, more- 
over, to the centralization of the powers of the government 
and the greater supremacy of the State. 

As time went on it was not only the socialists who de- 
manded change. With a great many people there was 
increasing desire that the government should be altered 
so as to make it more democratic and bring it more largely 
into the hands of representatives of the people. Usually, 
in other states, the progress of industrialism, which caused 
large numbers of people to come together in manufactur- 
ing centers, and the spread of education, which made the 
masses of the people more capable of self-government 
at the same time that they were more interested in govern- 
ing themselves, had brought about larger participation 
by the people in their government and constantly in- 
creasing desire to have larger share. So it had been for 
a long time in England and in France, in the Scandinavian 
countries, in Belgium and Holland, and there had long 
been persistent efforts made by a few people in Russia. 
But in Germany, where one of the widest and most eflFec- 
tive systems of education had prevailed throughout the 
nineteenth century, and where for fifty years there had 
been unceasing drift of people from the farms to the cities, 
the rise of democracy had been slow, and democracy al- 
ways seemed to make very scant headway before the dis- 
asters of the years of the Great War. 




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PIRE IN 1914 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



165 



This was partly because of the old associations and tradi- 
tions of the German people. In England self-government 
and democracy grew up slowly and painfully during a 
long course of time. They were inherited by the English 
colonists of America and there developed under more 
favorable conditions. In France they were violently 
established at the time of the French Revolution, and then 
after repeated failures subsequent to that time they were 
gradually established among the French people. Ger- 
mans, too, had sought these things and tried to bring them 
about ; but for a great while they were confronted with the 
more pressing problem of unification, which England and 
France had long ago achieved, before they began to 
develop self-government and democratic institutions. 
When finally German unity was effected, it was brought 
about under the leadership of Prussia, whose rulers and 
people had always been far less influenced by democratic 
tendencies than the people of Bavaria or Baden. The 
ideas of Bismarck and the conservatives predominated 
in making the constitution of the German Empire, and 
their ideas continued potent in its governance. To some 
it seemed a pity that the unification of Germany could 
not have been accomplished by the liberal and peaceful 
Germans instead of through conquest and force. In 
1870 Emile Ollivier, French premier, who strove so hard 
to avert war with Prussia, urged his countrymen not to 
oppose "the natural movement of Germany unity." 
"If," he said, "we allow it to complete itself quietly by 
successive stages, it will not give supremacy to the bar- 
barous and sophistical Germany, it will assure it to the 
Germany of intellect and culture. War, on the other 
hand, would establish, during a time impossible to cal- 
culate, the domination of the Germany of the Junkers 
and the pedants." So it was. The greatness of Ger- 
many's success strengthened the conservatives who had 
brought it about, and disarmed their opponents. And 



Causes 



The Empire 
established 
by the con- 
servatives 
and the mili- 
tarists 



166 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The estab- 
lished sys- 
tem deemed 
necessary 
and good 



The govern- 
ment resists 
reform 



as it had seemed necessary to many that the unity and 
prosperity of Germany should be achieved through force, 
so afterward it seemed to them that Germany, sur- 
rounded as she was by older powers and, perhaps, by 
enemies, could only keep her position by being strong 
and ever on guard. All through Bismarck's period, there- 
fore, the central government, which gave Germany success 
and prosperity, but allowed itself to be affected little by 
the mass of the people, retained its power and its hold 
on the affection of most of the people. As conditions 
altered and a larger number desired some change, it was 
always possible for the ruling class to divert their attention 
or thwart their wishes. So long as the immense prosperity 
and expansion of the German Empire continued, there 
were not a great many who would oppose the rulers; and 
generally the prosperity continued. 

Moreover, many believed that even though Bismarck's 
work was thoroughly established, old dangers lasted on 
for other reasons. Germany of the twentieth century 
had mighty ambitions, which were constantly taught to 
her people. These ambitions alarmed other European 
powers, and in the years 1904-7 a combination of France, 
Russia, and England was effected. To the inhabitants of 
these countries this agreement seemed necessary because 
of probable danger from the German Empire; but German 
leaders easily persuaded the people that neighboring 
powers had combined to encircle and crush the Father- 
land, which could be saved only if the army remained 
powerful and the government strong. These arguments 
were ridiculed by socialists, and they became less effective 
in time. It was partly because of the increasing demand 
for more democratic control that the Social-Democratic 
Party increased so greatly. In 1912 it received more than 
4,000,000 votes, getting its support not only from social- 
ists but from liberals who did not greatly favor socialist 
doctrines. Nevertheless, nothing was really 



accom- 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



167 



plished. State socialism, which made Germany a leader 
in social reform, strengthened the central government as 
it was, much more than it assisted the tendency toward 
democratic reform. "This must be done by the State 
and not by the people," said William II in 1894. For all 
these reasons the movement to make ministers responsible 
to the Reichstag^ though urgently sought for on several 
occasions, always came to nothing. The demand that 
representation be re-apportioned in accordance with 
changes of population went unheeded year after year. 
The antiquated Prussian Constitution continued to keep 
power and privilege for the few. In the midst of the 
Great War — when the government, failing in its design of 
getting a grand victory quickly, was compelled to seek 
the utmost assistance from its people in a long and ex- 
hausting contest — the beginning of reform was made at 
last, and promise was given that after the war something 
more would be done. But all this came too late; for 
presently Germany went down in defeat, and the old sys- 
tem was then swept away completely. Whether the old 
system was better suited to the Germans, whether they 
really desire to establish a democracy, can only be known 
in the future. 

It was the same with militarism and the army. By 
war, it seemed, Prussia had risen, and the army had been 
the foundation of the Empire. Furthermore, Prussian 
universal military service had created a national army 
in which most of the young men had some part. For these 
reasons the army was cherished and generally held high 
in esteem. And it was so entrenched in the organization 
of the State that it seemed to have impregnable position. 
Its officers and leaders, drawn mostly from the aristocratic 
class, constituted a military caste, and on occasion as- 
sumed such privileges that they seemed to be above the 
law. From time to time officers treated civilians with 
violence or with the utmost contempt, and it was always 



The Kaiser, 
not the 
Reichstag, 
in control 



Militarism 



168 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Zabern 
Affair 



Treatment 
of subject 
races 



difficult in such instances to get any redress from the 
courts. A notorious instance, known abroad better than 
any of the others, was the Zabern Affair. In 1913 a certain 
Lieutenant von Forstner at Zabern in Alsace spoke con- 
temptuously of the citizens there, and declared that in- 
stead of punishing a soldier who had stabbed an Alsatian, 
he would have given him a reward for his trouble. The 
townsmen, already weary of the conduct of the soldiers, 
showed their dislike, and presently the lieutenant in his 
wrath struck a lame cobbler on the forehead with his 
sword. Against such militarism public sentiment in Ger- 
many was aroused and the matter went to the Reichs- 
tag, where it was bitterly condemned. Von Forstner was 
tried by court martial, but no punishment followed. 
There were mass meetings in Germany to protest, and 
much feeling was aroused; but that year the government 
was teaching the people that great danger threatened the 
country, especially from the Russians, and the German 
army was increased to greater size than ever before. 

Essentially autocratic rule associated with militarism 
caused the treatment accorded to the alien subjects in the 
Empire. The English-speaking peoples had grown great 
partly by attracting others to themselves, and such as- 
similation as there was came largely from generous tolera- 
tion. French Canadians were never troubled about their 
religion or their language, and the Boers within the British 
Empire kept all the rights they had fought to defend. 
Even in Ireland, where England's greatest failure had 
been. Irishmen were never coerced into abandoning the 
Gaelic language, though in the course of time most of them 
of their own accord adopted English. But in countries 
like Russia and Germany, of the regime before the Great 
War, it seemed to the rulers all-important that all their 
subjects should be respectively Russian or German. 
Accordingly, in Russia the Poles and the Finns were 
subjected to grievous persecution. In the German Em- 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 



169 



pire Frenchmen of Alsace-Lorraine, Danes in Schleswig, 
and the Poles of Posen, were treated as inferiors and sub- 
jected to discriminations in the hope of making them 
thoroughly German. 

When in 1871 Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to the 
Empire the inhabitants, though most of them were more 
German than French by race, were strongly attached to 
France, and protested at the forcible separation. Bis- 
marck believed that, with the passing away of the genera- 
tion that had known French rule, attachment to France 
would disappear. The strongest French sympathizers left 
the country, and their places were taken by immigrants 
from the German states of the Empire. But Alsace- 
Lorraine was given a dependent and inferior status, as 
the Reichsland, or imperial territory. It had neither 
influence in the Empire nor sufficient self-government 
for itself. Therefore, as time passed, the feeling of dis- 
content did not wane; love of the old memories of France 
did not die; and German immigrants themselves de- 
nounced the treatment of the Reichsland. The German 
authorities, who have usually not been able to conciliate 
other peoples, as the English and the French have done, 
but have relied on strong methods and force, strove to 
compel obedience and contentment. They only increased 
the irritation. This made a dangerous situation which 
they tried to meet by adding to the garrisons and subject- 
ing the provinces to very strict military rule. This was re- 
sented still further. As far as possible French things were 
proscribed, and one boy of twelve was imprisoned for 
whistling the Marseillaise. German rulers did not realize 
as clearly as some foreigners that what the inhabitants of 
the Reichsland wanted most of all was not return to France 
but self-government. In 1911 a new constitution was 
granted, but it was not satisfactory to the people. After 
forty years nothing, aside from force, really held the 
population to the Empire except their increasingly prosper- 



Alsace- 
Lorraine 



Continued 
resentment 



170 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Poles 
in the east- 
em districts 



ous industrial life, closely connected with German industry 
and mostly dependent upon it. 

The Germans so dealt with these provinces largely be- 
cause of their strategic position, and because military 
considerations seemed all-important. German leaders 
would have felt safer if the Reichsland had been inhabited 
entirely by Germans. The same reasons had much to do 
with their treatment of the Poles in West Prussia and 
Posen. The Polish districts of Prussia lay right where Rus- 
sian invaders might strike deep into the Empire. This 
country, when taken from Poland, had contained many 
people who spoke German; and in time, with good treat- 
ment, all of the inhabitants might have been made loyal 
subjects. It was considered necessary, however, to make 
them thoroughly German, especially after the Kultur- 
l-anipf had aroused in the Catholic Poles a strong feeling 
of Polish nationality. Bismarck wished to prevent the 
use of Polish in their public schools, and he desired to 
populate the country with German peasants; but presently 
more lenient treatment was accorded. Repressive meas- 
ures were undertaken in earnest, however, after a while, 
when it was seen clearly that the Poles were not giving up 
their own national feeling. As in Alsace-Lorraine, news- 
papers were suppressed and many people fined and 
imprisoned. In 1901 it was ordered that religious in- 
struction in the schools should be given in German. 
Polish teachers were taken from their positions, school 
children were forbidden to pray in Polish, and Poles were 
forbidden to use their language in public assemblies. In 
1907 the Prussian Government passed a law by which 
Polish owners might be compelled to sell their land, so that 
their estates might get into German possession; and in 
1913 a large sum of money was appropriated for the pur- 
pose of colonizing Prussian Poland with Germans. Polish 
peasants were even forbidden to build houses upon their 
own land. But despite the severity of this persecution. 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE 171 

little more was accomplished than making the Polish sub- 
jects of the Empire burn with hatred, and desire free- 
dom from the rule of the masters who oppressed them. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General accounts: J. E, Barker, Modern Germany (1905, last 
ed. 1919); H. Blum, Das Deutsche Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks 
(1893); W. H. Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany (1908, 
new ed. 1919); R. H, Fife, Jr., The German Empire Between Two 
Wars (1916); Karl Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte der Jiingsten 
Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 2 vols. (1912-13); Henri Licten- 
berger, U Allemagne\Moderne; Son Evolution (1907), trans, by 
A. M. Ludovici (1913); H. von Sybel, Die Begrundung des 
Deutschen Reichs durch Wilhelm I, 7 vols. (5th ed. revised, 1889- 
94), biassed, but based upon the sources; Charles Tower, Ger- 
many of To-day (1913). 

Bismarck: the best biography in English is C. G. Robertson, 
Bismarck (1919); in German the best is Erich Marcks, Otto von 
Bismarck: ein Lebensbild (1918), and a larger work; Bismarck: 
eine Biographie, Volume I (1909) ; H. Blum, Fiirst Bismarck und 
Seine Zeit, 6 vols. (1894-5); G. Egelhaaf, Bismarck, Sein Leben 
und Sein Werk (1911) ; J. W. Headlam, Bismarck and the Founda- 
tion of the German Empire (1899); H. Kohl, Fiirst Bismarck: 
Regesten zu einer Wissenschaftlichen Biographie, 2 vols. (1891-2), 
containing important parts of letters and speeches; Moritz 
Busch (English trans.), Bismarck — Some Secret Pages of His 
History, 2 vols. (1898), the diary of one who had oflBcial and 
private intercourse with Bismarck; Max Lenz, Geschichte Bis- 
marcks (1902); C. Lowe, Prince Bismarck: an Historical Biog- 
raphy, 2 vols. (1886); Paul Matter, Bismarck et son Temps, 
3 vols. (1905-8), perhaps the best of the longer biographies at 
present; J. Penzler, Fiirst Bismarck nach Seiner Entlassung 
(1897-8); Munroe Smith, Bismarck and German Unity (2d ed. 
1910). 

Bismarck's utterances and writings: Otto, Fiirst von Bis- 
marck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, 2 vols. (1898), Vol. Ill 
(1919), Vols. I and II trans, by A. J. Butler, Reflections and Remi- 
niscences, 2 vols. (1899); H. Kohl, Wegweiser durch Bismarcks 
Gedanken und Erinnerungen (1898); L. Hahn, Fiirst Bismarck, 
Sein Politisches Leben und Wirken, 5 vols. (1878-91), for speeches 
dispatches, and political letters; H. Kohl, Die Politischen Reden 



17^ EUROPE SINCE 1870 

des Fiirsten Bismarck, 14 vols. (1892-1905) ; Hermann Hofmann, 
Furst Bismarck, 1890-1898, 2 vols. (1913), contains Bismarck's 
important critical contributions to the Hamburger Nachrichten. 

Other biographies: Erich Marcks, Kaiser Wilhelm I (5th ed. 
1905), excellent. 

Government : if the student finds it desirable and convenient, 
he will obtain a vast amount of curious and interesting informa- 
tion from the proceedings of the Reichstag — Stenographische 
Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen des Reichstags (1871-); B. E. 
Howard, The German Empire (1906); Paul Laband, Das Staats- 
recht des Deutschen Reiches, 4 vols. (4th ed. 1901), the stand- 
ard treatise, Deutsches Reichsstaatsrecht (6th ed. 1912); H. G. 
James, Principles of Prussian Administration (1913); Gaetan 
(Vicomte) Combes de Lestrade, Les Monarchies de VEmpire 
Allemand, Organisation Constitutionelle et Administrative (1904), 
excellent; Oskar Stillich, Die Politischen Parteien in Deidschland, 
Vols. I, II (1908, 1911); W. H. Dawson, Municipal Life and 
Government in Germany (1914). 

The Kulturkampf: Ludwig Hahn, Geschichte des Kultur- 
kampfes in Preussen (1881), contains documents; Georges Goyau, 
Bismarck et I'^glise: le Culturkampf, 1870-1887, 4 vols. (1911- 
13), best on the subject. 

Protection and economic life: W. H. Dawson, Protection in 
Germany (1904), best; Werner Sombart, Die Deutsche Volkswirt- 
schaft im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1903). 

Socialism and the State: Charles Andler, Les Origines du 
Socialisme d'etat en AUemagne (ed. 1911); W. H. Dawson, Bis- 
marck and State Socialism (1891), The German Workman (1906), 
Social Insurance in Germany, 1883-1911 (1912), all excellent. 
August Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, 3 vols. (1910-14), abridged 
trans. My Life (1912). 

Alsace-Lorraine: Barry Cerf, Alsace-Lorraine Since 1870 
(1919) ; C. D. Hazen, Alsace-Lorraine Under German Rule (1917). 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE LEADERSHIP OF GERMANY— THE 
TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

L. L. M. M. I'empereur d'Autriche, roi de Boheme etc. et roi aposto- 
lique de Hongrie, Tempereur d'Allemagne, roi de Prusse et le roi 
d'ltalie, animees du desir d'augmenter les garanties de la paix 
generale, de fortifier le principe monarehique et d'assurer par cela- 
meme le mantien intacte de I'ordre sociale et politique dans leurs 
etats respectifs, sont tombees d'accord de conclure un traite. . . 
The Triple Alliance, May 20, 1882. 

Wir liegen mitten in Europa. Wir haben mindestens drei Angriffs- 
fronten. . . . Gott hat uns in eine Situation gesetzt, in wel- 
cher wir durch unsere Nachbarn daran verhindert werden, irgend- 
wie in Tragheit oder Versumpfung zu gerathen. Er hat uns die 
kriegerischste und unruhigste Nation, die Franzosen, an die Seite 
gesetzt, und er hat in Russland kriegerische Neigungen gross wer- 
den lassen. , . . Wir Deutschen furchten Gott, aber sonst 
nichts in der Welt. 

Bismarck in the Reichstag, February 6, 1888; Stenographische 
Berichte, 1887-1888, pp. 727, 728, 733. 

. . . hold fast to the conviction that our God would never have 
taken such great pains with our German Fatherland and its people 
if he had not been preparing us for something still greater. 
Speech of William II at Bremen, March 22, 1905. 

After 1871 Bismarck's greater tasks had to do with Bismarck's 
foreign affairs. The new German Empire was a powerful ^^"^^ 
state of 41,000,000 people. It was larger than France, in 
strong military position, flushed with victory, and with the 
prestige of unparalleled success. But it was also a new 
state, a newcomer among old neighbors, apt to be regarded 
as an upstart and an intruder. Its very appearance 
had completely upset the old balance of power, and there 
was boimd to be some difficulty in adjusting the equi- 

173 



174 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The prob- 
lems con- 
fronting 
Bismarck 



The situa- 
tion in 
Europe 



librium again. The German Empire had risen on the 
defeat of Austria and of France. The Austrians might 
try to regain the position they had lost. The French 
proclaimed, as some Germans do now, that assuredly 
they would have their revenge. The position of Germany 
was very strong, for in between other great powers she 
could strike out, if necessary, at one or the other; but the 
converse of this was that a hostile alliance of surrounding 
powers might be able to crush her completely. 

It was the task of Bismarck now to consolidate and 
keep what had just been gained, to prevent the for- 
mation of an unfriendly alliance, to isolate Germany's 
foes, to make new friends and keep the old ones, and 
see that Germany would never be taken at a disadvantage 
during the period of readjustment of affairs. He suc- 
ceeded magnificently in all of this. Great as had been his 
success in making possible the unification of Germany, his 
success in keeping the unity, prosperity, and commanding 
position of the German Empire now was still more striking. 
When in 1890 he retired from the management of public 
affairs, the foundations of the Empire seemed impregnable. 
Germany was the center of a powerful alliance; and was on 
friendly terms with most of the other great powers; while 
France continued in the lonely isolation in which her dis- 
aster had left her. 

When Bismarck began his great schemes against Austria 
and France he had already assured himself of the friend- 
ship of Italy and Russia. With these powers he continued 
on excellent terms after 1871, and did all that he could to 
strengthen the connection. Great Britain had been in- 
creasingly alarmed at the actions of Prussia from 1864 
to 1871, and among the British people there was no little 
sympathy for France during the terrible winter of the war. 
But this was a period when historians and novelists in 
England loved to think of the Teutonic origin of their 
people and the excellence of all things Germanic; so that 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



175 



for some time many Englishmen felt that there were very 
close ties of relationship between the Germans and them- 
selves. Moreover, since the ending of the Napoleonic 
wars, the activities of Britain had gone mostly into the 
administration of her ever -widening Empire, British 
leaders wished to avoid entanglements in Europe, and 
remain secure in "splendid isolation." 

At once Bismarck proceeded to grander designs. He 
desired to draw together in close friendship and alliance 
the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. He 
had had something of this in mind in 1866, when terms 
were made with Austria defeated. By the Peace of Prague 
Austria lost no territory to Prussia, and paid almost no 
indemnity, while everything possible was done to soothe 
the feelings of the vanquished. Accordingly, it was not 
difficult to bring about good understanding again. In 
1872, after skilful arranging, the emperors of Russia, 
Austria, and the German Empire were brought together 
in Berlin, where they arrived at a cordial agreement. 
No alliance was concluded; but this understanding of the 
three rulers so far effected Bismarck's plan of a new 
group of powers which would include the new German 
Empire that there was not any great misconception 
involved when people spoke of it as the League of Three 
Emperors {Dreikaiserhund) . 

For six years this condition continued, and Bismarck 
had little to fear, with Italy friendly, and England holding 
aloof. But now there developed another great change 
which made impossible continued intimate connection 
with Austria-Hungary and Russia at the same time; for 
they came into such opposition that not even his masterly 
skill sufficed to hold them together. Russia and Austria 
were rivals for the same thing, and by 1878 could no longer 
be good friends, since they could not each have the object 
desired, which both of them greatly wanted 

For a long time the Russian people had been extending 



The Drei- 
kaiserhund 



Austria- 
Hungary 
and Russia 



176 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Expansion of 
Russia to 
the south- 
west 



Expansion of 
Austria to 
the south 



westward and southward, always hoping for some good 
outlet on the sea, and looking forward to the day when 
expansion down through the Balkans would bring them to 
Constantinople, mother of their civilization and faith. 
From the Turk they had already taken much land on the 
northern shore of the Black Sea, and now it seemed to 
them that ambition and destiny both called them forward 
down the west shore, to free the Christian, Slavic peoples 
in the Balkan peninsula, and to drive the Turks out of 
their great city at last. But meanwhile Austria was 
reviving her ambitions to take Balkan territory from the 
Turk. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when 
Ottoman power in Europe was at its zenith, Austria was 
the bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turk. It 
was to her that the submerged Christian peoples to the 
south looked for their future deliverance; and she did 
enlarge her dominions by southward expansion when 
the power of the Turk began to wane. After a while 
her ambitions were turned in this direction more than 
ever before. Once she had had great influence in northern 
Europe. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave her that 
part of the Netherlands which was afterward known as 
Belgium, and for a long while she was leader among the 
German states. But the wars of the French Revolution 
took away her Austrian Netherlands, and in 1866 she 
was thrust out of the community of the German peoples. 
At the same time she had just lost her hold on the Italian 
peninsula. But her ambitions rose quickly again. As 
soon as the Austrians and the Hungarians reached agree- 
ment, and good relations began with the new German 
Empire, the hopes of the leaders in the Dual Monarchy 
turned to new expansion, and it seemed now that the best 
chance for this was down the Adriatic, perhaps, through 
the Balkan peninsula to the iEgean. So it happened that 
in this period the ambitions of Russia and Austria- 
Hungary thwarted each other. Each strove for influence 




8. THE TREATY OF SAN STEFANO 

177 



178 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Russo- 
Turkish War 



The Con- 
gress of 
Berlin, 1878 



Conse- 
quences: 
Russia and 
Prussia drift 
apart 



among the Balkan peoples and tried by all means to hinder 
the other from securing advantage. In 1878 a great 
crisis came, when Russia, eager to extend her power, but 
also sincerely aroused at the atrocities perpetrated by 
Turks on the Bulgarian people, began the Russo-Turkish 
War (1877-8), and, after a fierce struggle, shattered the 
enemy's resistance and forced the signing of a treaty which 
destroyed the power of Turkey in Europe. The subject 
peoples were set free, and most of the Ottoman territory 
in Europe was given to a new large Bulgarian state, which, 
it was then believed, would be dependent on Russia. 

But this treaty was not allowed to stand. A British 
fleet prepared for action near Constantinople, and Austria- 
Hungary also let it be known that such a settlement was not 
satisfactory. In the following critical months the Russian 
ambassador to Great Britain reached a partial under- 
standing with the British Government; and meanwhile 
Russia consented to submit the treaty to a congress of the 
powers. June 13, such a congress met at Berlin. Bis- 
marck, who had declared that Germany had no territorial 
claims in the Balkans, and that he would be glad to act as 
an "honest broker" between the others, was elected presi- 
dent the first day. By the Treaty of Berlin which fol- 
lowed, Russia suffered a great diplomatic defeat. What 
she had done in the Ball^ans was largely undone. The 
Bulgaria she proposed to establish was greatly reduced, 
while Austria-Hungary, who had taken no part in defeat- 
ing the Turks, got the right to administer the two Turkish 
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which lay contigu- 
ous to her and now extended her dominion far southward. 

The Congress and the Treaty of Berlin mark an epoch 
in the recent history of Europe. Many great consquences 
were to follow from the work of the diplomats who went 
there, but one of the first important results was the ending 
of the close friendship which had existed between Russia 
and Prussia since Prussia's friendly attitude to Russia 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



179 



during the Polish rebellion of 1863. Gortchakov, the Rus- 
sian chancellor, who already disliked Bismarck, believed 
that such humiliation would not have come to his country 
had he received German support. In 1866 Russia had been 
friendly to Prussia, and in 1870 she had even done some- 
thing to keep Austria from assisting France. Now in her 
time of need the German Empire had done nothing for her. 
Russia had desired an offensive and defensive alliance with 
Germany, but Bismarck had refused; and forced at last to 
make his choice, he now chose Austria rather than Russia. 
Perhaps he feared that since Russia was opposing most of 
the principal European powers, Germany in alliance with 
Russia would have to oppose them also, and would thence 
be made too dependent on Russia's good will in the future. 
At all events, cordial friendship between them now came 
to an end for the time. 

For the moment Germany was isolated, and there was 
danger that Russia might seek alliance with either Austria 
or France. But the danger soon passed. In October, 
1879, after brief negotiations, an alliance was concluded 
between the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. By 
the terms of this agreement, kept secret then but after- 
ward published, "the two High Contracting Parties'* 
were bound to stand by each other with all their armed 
forces if either one were attacked by Russia ; in case either 
were attacked by some other power than Russia "the 
other High Contracting Party" would observe "at least 
an attitude of benevolent neutrality" toward the partner 
in the treaty; but if the power attacking were supported 
by Russia, then the two High Contracting Parties would 
wage war jointly until peace was concluded by them to- 
gether. 

Scarcely had this Dual Alliance given the security 
Bismarck desired when he extended it to make the well- 
known Triple Alliance, which endured until the time of 
the Great War. This was done by drawing Italy to the two 



Indignation 
in Russia 



Alliance be- 
tween the 
German Em- 
pire and 
Austria- 
Hungary, 
1879 



Italy joins 
the Triple 
Alliance, 
1882 



180 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Italy and 
Austria- 
Hungary 



Italy and 
France 



Rivalry and 
ambition 



Central Powers. The general interests of Italy did not 
seem to lie in such company, since she must have as one of 
her partners Austria-Hungary, long Italy's master and 
oppressor, who only a few years before had been expelled 
from the peninsula, who still held many Italians as un- 
willing subjects, and against whom Italians cherished 
bitter hatred from recollection of a thousand acts of 
tyranny and evil. Moreover, the spirit of the Italian 
people and the ties of language, law, and custom, bound 
them rather to France than the German Empire. But 
there were then, as there were later on, reasons why the 
Italians should feel hostile to France. 

In 1915 Italy joined the Allies against Austria-Hungary 
and Germany, and after valiant and exhausting endeav- 
ors contributed to the victory which followed. During 
the course of the struggle it seemed to observers that Italy 
and France were drawn together by common sufferings 
and efforts as never before. But scarcely was the struggle 
at an end when bitter causes of difference arose almost at 
once. Italy wished to have the opposite coast of the 
Adriatic and become the controlling power in what had 
been the southern Slavic dominions of the former Austro- 
Hungarian state. France hoped that upon the ruins 
of the fallen Dual Monarchy would rise new Slavic com- 
monwealths partly dependent on herself. Accordingly, 
there was such immediate conflict of ambition and desires 
between Italy and France, that already in 1919 predictions 
were being made that Italy would renew her connection 
with Germany as soon as she could. 

So it was when Bismarck sought to draw Italy into his 
schemes. Only a few years before the Austrian armies had 
been overthrown and Italy's unity forwarded through the 
powerful assistance of France. But since 1859 several 
things had occurred to alienate the Italian people. Na- 
poleon III had supported the pope in maintaining his 
temporal power, and this was overthrown and uni- 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



181 



fication completed only in 1870, when France was no longer 
able to interfere. Even after the Franco-German War 
there was some fear that French intervention might restore 
to the pope what he had lost. Furthermore, Italy was a 
young and ambitious state, and wished ardently to appear 
as one of the greater powers. Actually this was beyond 
her resources, but it seemed then more possible if she were 
closely associated with great companions. Finally the 
direct motive was craftily supplied by Bismarck himself. 
In Algeria France had long before begun the foundations 
of her north African empire. It was evident that she 
would be glad to expand into the neighboring country 
of Tunisia, but it was also apparent that Italy had high 
hopes of getting Tunisia for herself. At the Congress 
of Berlin Bismarck had secretly encouraged France to 
take Tunisia, hoping that if she were engrossed in distant 
enterprises she would think less of a war of revenge, and 
probably foreseeing that such seizure would enrage the 
Italians and drive them into Germany's arms. 

So it came about. In 1881 France established a pro- 
tectorate over Tunisia. There was an outburst of in- 
dignation in Italy, and the statesmen of Rome, hearkening 
to the persuasion of Bismarck, joined Germany and Austria- 
Hungary in alliance. Thus did Italy ally herself with 
an old enemy and a recent friend. No little gain came to 
her. When in 1866 she had obtained Venetia from Aus- 
tria, the strong places on the border all remained in Aus- 
tria's hands, and Italy with weak and exposed frontier 
was always at the mercy of an Austrian attack. From 
this danger she was now freed by being associated with 
Austria-Hungary, and by being in some sort under German 
protection. More and more did she come under German 
influence; and in the following years German merchants 
and financiers almost got economic control of the country. 
In course of time, however, as Italy grew stronger and less 
afraid of Austria-Hungary, she grew more ambitious and 



Rivalry 

about 

Tunisia 



Italy added 
to the Ger- 
manic alli- 
ance. 1882 



German 
influence 
in Italy 



182 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Austro- 
German 
Treaty of 
1879 the 
principal 
link between 
the Central 
Powers 



The treaties 
of the Triple 
Alliance 



hoped to secure larger control of the Adriatic for herself. 
Thus she came into conflict with Austria, and in the end 
it was almost as difficult for Germany to reconcile her 
partners in the Triple Alliance as once it had been for 
Bismarck to hold Austria and Russia together. The 
Alliance was renewed again and again, and it lasted long 
beyond Bismarck's time. But before the Great War be- 
gan Italy was an unwilling member; during that struggle 
she withdrew; and the war broke the Alliance to pieces. 

The history, the development, the character of the 
engagements binding Germany, Austria-Hungary, and 
Italy long remained enveloped in secrecy, to be guessed 
at by outsiders and ill understood. It was assumed that, 
roughly, their general character was known, but when, 
after the downfall of Austria-Hungary in 1918, the archives 
of Vienna were examined and the secret treaties of the 
Alliance made known, it was evident that much had 
remained concealed. It was then apparent that always 
the basis and strongest part of the arrangement was the 
Austro-German Treaty, the treaty of alliance concluded 
between the German Empire and Austria-Hungary in 
1879. The duration of this treaty had been fixed at five 
years, but in accordance with its third article, which had 
remained undivulged, provision had been made for the 
automatic continuance of the arrangement for periods of 
three years, in case neither partner desired otherwise. 
In 1902, after a conference concerning the continuance of 
the Treaty, it was specifically agreed that the Treaty 
should be automatically renewed each three years. Mean- 
while, in 1883, it had been renewed for a five-year period, 
to end in 1889. It was this treaty, and this one only, 
which obligated the German Empire to assist the Dual 
Monarchy if it were attacked by Russia, 

Supplementary to this agreement and less important, 
but parallel to it, was the Triple Alliance proper. The 
treaty of this alliance was made in 1882. It was renewed 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



183 



in 1887, at which time were added a separate treaty be- 
tween Austria-Hungary and Italy concerning the Balkans 
and another treaty between the German Empire and 
Italy directed against France. In 1891 these three treaties 
were consolidated in the third Treaty of the Triple Alli- 
ance. Von Billow, the German statesman, afterward 
declared that the Triple Alliance was "an insurance com- 
pany" and not a "company for profit." It had, indeed, 
been purely defensive at first, but after 1891 it contained 
provisions which contemplated the possibility of aggres- 
sion against France. The Treaty was to continue for six 
years, and for an additional six thereafter if not denounced. 
In 1902 it was specifically renewed unchanged, as it was 
again in 1912. It is now known that the Triple Alhance 
did not provide any definite military stipulations, though 
a convention between Germany and Italy in 1888 provided 
for the employment of Italian troops against France. Naval 
agreements, on the other hand, were made: in 1900 for in- 
dependent naval operations by the partners; in 1913 for 
joint naval action, the scheme being drawn up in detail. 

From the first the friendship or benevolent attitude of 
Great Britain was desired. In the first Treaty of the 
Triple Alliance in 1882 protocols attached declared that 
the contracting parties had no hostile intentions 
toward England. Five years later Great Britain, Austria- 
Hungary, and Italy came to an agreement concerning the 
Mediterranean. In the same year such an agreement 
was made between Italy and Spain, to which Austria- 
Hungary acceded; and this was prolonged in 1891. 
Knowledge of these arrangements makes clear now what 
was only feared or suspected then, how complete was the 
isolation of France, and how dangerous, indeed, was her 
position. In the third Treaty of the Triple Alliance in 
1891 a protocol asserted the adherence in principle of 
England to certain stipulations of the arrangement, and 
declared that the contracting parties should exert them- 



Character of 
the Triple 
Alliance 



Great Brit- 
ain, Italy, 
and the 
Triple Alli- 
ance 



184 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Great Brit- 
ain draws 
away 



Rumania 
attached to 
the Alliance 



Hegemony 
of the 
German 
Empire 



selves to obtain her adherence respecting other matters 
also. This was the moment of England's closest approach 
to the Triple Alliance, and marked the culmination of the 
power of the Alliance. In the next decade Germany and 
Great Britain began to drift apart, and as this took place 
Italy partly fell away. From the start it had been evi- 
dent that Italy, entirely at the mercy of the principal sea 
power, would never be willing to oppose England. In 1896 
she formally notified the Central Powers that she could not 
fight against France together with England. A few years 
later Italy came to a separate understanding with France 
concerning Tripoli, thus making a "re-insurance treaty," 
since her former engagements in the Triple Alliance were 
renewed, with their stipulations directed against France. 

But while Italy was getting from the Triple Alliance 
all she could, and yet gradually coming to be less depend- 
able in it, the two principal partners, Austria-Hungary 
and the German Empire, came more closely together 
and tried to strengthen their position by additional ar- 
rangements. Not only Italy but Rumania was added. In 
1883 a treaty of alliance was concluded between Austria- 
Hungary and Rumania. On the same day Germany 
was added, and Italy five years later. This adding of 
Rumania as an appendage to the Triple Alliance was re- 
newed in 1892, 1902, and 1913. With respect to the Bal- 
kans, Austria strove to strengthen her position by making 
an arrangement with Russia in 1897, and with Italy in 
1901 and 1909. 

The Triple Alliance was to a considerable extent defen- 
sive, but by means of it Bismarck had none the less raised 
the German Empire to be the controlling power in Europe, 
and to a marvellous pitch of greatness. It was clearly 
realized by contemporary statesmen that the Alliance 
controlled all the central part of the Continent, extending 
from the northern waters to the Mediterranean, separ- 
ating eastern Europe completely from the west, and thus 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



185 



occupying an impregnable position. Within this territory 
were more than 100,000,000 people, and armies of 
2,000,000 well-trained soldiers. It would have been the 
sheerest madness for any other single state to come into 
conflict with it. In this combination the German Empire 
was the most powerful member and the controlling force. 
Accordingly, after 1882, Germany had a manifest supe- 
riority, indeed an overlordship or hegemony in Europe, 
and Bismarck was the most powerful man in the world. 

But high as was the position of Germany, and mighty 
as her power had become, Bismarck increased it still fur- 
ther. During all the remaining years of his power he 
succeeded in keeping the other great European states 
from entering into a counter alliance. Thus he kept 
France for the most part in the isolation in which he 
had placed her. At the same time he tried to avoid 
any misunderstanding with Great Britain, and tried suc- 
cessfully to renew the connection with Russia. 

Scarcely had the Alliance of 1879 been made between 
Austria-Hungary and Germany, when Bismarck tried to 
draw Russia into another understanding like what had 
existed before the Congress of Berlin. The details of this 
very secret diplomacy were long unknown, but enough 
has recently been revealed from the Russian and the 
Austrian archives to explain clearly the main outlines of 
the thing. Bismarck had little confidence at first in the 
stability of the alliance with Austria. He wished, more- 
over, to prevent what did take place after his retirement, 
an alliance between Russia and France. Therefore, in 
1881 he succeeded in bringing about an agreement be- 
tween the emperors of Russia, Austria, and the Ger- 
man Empire, that in case any one of these three powers 
should be at war with a fourth, the other two parties to 
the understanding would preserve a "benevolent neu- 
trality." This stipulation was also to apply in case of a 
war between one of the three parties and Turkey, provided 



Bismarck's 

foreign 

policy 



Renewal of 
good rela- 
tions with 
Russia 



186 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Agreement 
between 
Russia, 
Austria- 
Hungary, 
and the 
German 
Empire 



The "Rein- 
surance 
Treaty," 
1887 



that an understanding about such a war had already been 
reached between the parties. The understanding made 
special allowance for the continuance of the alliance be- 
tween Austria-Hungary and Germany, thus making the 
agreement more advantageous to Germany than to Russia, 
Nevertheless, by skillful management Bismarck brought 
it about that the agreement was renewed with slight 
modification in 1884. Three years later, however, this 
was not done, for Austria had been steadily acquir- 
ing a more dominating influence in the Balkans, and 
Russian importance there was declining. Therefore, 
Russia was unwilling to renew the agreement of 1881, 
but sought instead an alliance or agreement with Germany 
alone. 

Then Bismarck read to the Russian ambassador the 
terms of the alliance with Austria, theretofore a secret, 
and let it be understood that this alliance must be main- 
tained. But the two signed an agreement none the less. 
It provided that if one of the two contracting parties were 
at war with a third power, the other contracting party 
should maintain benevolent neutrality, though this 
provision was not to apply in case of an attack made by 
one of the contracting powers on either Austria or France, 
thus preserving the alliance with Austria, and safeguarding 
Russia's relations with France. Other articles provided 
that Germany should recognize Russia's rights in the Bal- 
kan peninsula and give her assistance to Russia in maintain- 
ing them. This agreement has been known as the "Rein- 
surance Treaty." In 1879 Bismarck had tried to insure 
Germany against attack by Russia in making the alliance 
with Austria-Hungary. Now in 1887 he got, as it were, 
insurance from the other side, for by this very secret 
"agreement" he provided largely against danger from 
France, who, under the terms of the agreement, would not 
be supported by Russia if she attacked the German 
Empire. 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



187 



Seldom has there been a diplomacy abler or more 
astute. Bismarck, who had been the principal founder 
of the Empire, succeeded in keeping all that had been 
obtained. During the years since 1871 not once was 
France able to make alliance with some other European 
power and so strengthen herself as to dare to begin war 
on her foe. And in all that time Germany was seldom 
without close friends, while during most of the years she 
was the center of a powerful alliance, and had, besides, a 
friendly understanding with Russia. But in spite of the 
vast success which had come to his efforts, the time of the 
chancellor was nearing its end. His era was passing, 
and other men with other plans were rising about him. 
By 1887 he was still a mighty figure, but a new generation 
was coming forward with ideals which he had never 
cherished and which, indeed, he could scarcely under- 
stand. 

It had been his purpose to unite the German states in 
a strong empire and then make Germany greatest of the 
European Powers. Difficulties in the way of German unity 
had baflfled German statesmen for ages, but now the uni- 
fication was accomplished almost completely. Among the 
European states the German Empire now towered like a 
giant. These tasks filled his mind and the world of 
diplomacy which he knew. But meanwhile Great Britain 
had been acquiring an ever-larger colonial empire, and 
France, humiliated in Europe, had gone beyond the seas 
and won for herself new dominions. All this had ap- 
pealed little to Bismarck. Only late did he seek to get 
colonies for Germany, and he never seems to have had 
ambitions for Germany in the Balkans or in Asia. But all 
around him now were growing up young Germans who saw 
a new world which could not be clear to his eyes. They 
would try to make Germany a great naval power, which 
would bring her into conflict with Britain, something 
that Bismarck had not dreamed of doing. They wished 



Greatness 
of Bis- 
marck's 
success 



The new 
generation 
in the Ger- 
man Em- 
pire 



188 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The passing 
of Bismarck 



His achieve- 
ments 



to have Germany secure colonies and markets all over the 
world. They wished to join Austria-Hungary in pushing 
forward in the Balkans, something that would bring to an 
end the possibility of cordial understanding with Russia. 

During the lifetime of his master, William I, the emperor 
whom he had made, his power continued unshaken, but 
after 1888 there was marked change. William II who 
became, after the brief reign of Frederick III, the new 
ruler, embodied new ideas and the new ambitions which 
were to carry Germany on so much further and at last 
bring her down to destruction. He regarded Bismarck 
with respect, but gave him none of the aiBFectionate con- 
fidence that his grandfather so long had given. Bis- 
marck soon found the management of affairs no longer 
unquestionably in his hands; while the young emperor, 
himself full of vigor and spirit, grew more and more im- 
patient at the domination of one who had so long been 
first in Europe that he was unable to take second place. 
For more than a year relations between the two grew more 
strained. The actual government of the Empire was in 
the hands of Bismarck, who had under him in important 
places members of his own family or friends whom he had 
raised up to obey him. But the new emperor, believing 
in the divine right of his rule, and confident of his own 
capacity to govern, presently insisted that his ideas be fol- 
lowed. In 1890 Bismarck resigned, after being told that 
he was in the way. It seemed a strange thing to the older 
generation that this could ever come to pass. As a 
famous cartoon in Punch portrayed it, to them it was 
"Dropping the Pilot." 

Of Bismarck's work it was long difficult to form proper es- 
timate. So gigantic had been his success, so tremendous 
and brilliant his achievements, that to contemporaries, 
and for some time after, it seemed that he was not only 
the most commanding figure of his century, after Napoleon 
I, but the greatest and the most successful statesman 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 189 

of that time. His accomplishment had been vast, and 
when he died his success seemed so complete as to justify 
almost all he had tried to do. He found Prussia the 
second power among the German states, and the German 
people divided. In a single generation he had made 
Prussia the greatest state on the Continent, defeated every 
one of her rivals, achieved the unification of Germany, 
and made his country the center and foundation thereof. 
And then in the course of long, crowded years he had 
kept the new German Empire safe in the exalted position 
he had given her, surrounded by friends, the head and 
leader of the strongest alliance in the world. During all 
this time there had come to the German people such 
prosperity and material success that they looked upon the 
man who had brought it about as the father and founder 
of his country. 

And yet there was another side of it all, which some His 
people, though not many, understood then, but which 
more would understand in the future. The unification 
of Germany had not been brought about through liberal 
development and respect of the rights of others, but 
partly by force, and chicane, and fraud, by contempt 
for the rights of people, and cynical disregard of obligations 
and honor. All of this seemed good to Germans who saw 
it through the glamor of success, and a generation of 
Germans was about to grow up which would admire 
above all things the force and lack of scruple which Bis- 
marck had employed and had taught so well. The leaders 
of Germany in the early part of the twentieth century, 
who had learned in the school of Bismarck as he had 
learned in that of Frederick the Great, would worship 
force and strength, just as he had once discarded all 
policy but the rule of "blood and iron"; and as he had 
altered the Ems dispatch, so would they tear up the 
treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality as a mere worthless 
"scrap of paper." This would array the world against 



methods 



190 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



His failure 



French 
hatred 



them, and the Empire, overwhelmed in defeat, would at 
last lie prostrate and dismembered. 

Moreover, since his work had been effected and main- 
tained by military power, in another generation all the great 
states of Europe had striven to make themselves strong 
military powers on the Prussian model. By the end of 
the nineteenth century Europe was groaning under almost 
intolerable military burdens, and a few years after was 
divided into two great military camps. Finally, in some 
respects the work of Bismarck was manifestly a failure. 
His treatment of France was such that France never for- 
gave it, and always thereafter the German Empire could 
count on French hostility as a danger whenever some 
other great danger should arise. It has often been said 
that Bismarck was opposed to taking Alsace-Lorraine 
from the French, knowing that such loss would leave them 
irreconcilable, and that he yielded only to the military 
advisors who insisted because of the strategic strength 
which the provinces would give. But at all events, he 
did yield, and thereafter the Empire was encumbered with 
the mortgage of the hatred of the French, who might 
despair of being able to take vengeance, but whose hatred 
nevertheless lived on. Bismarck does not seem to have 
looked into the future, beyond his own age. He scarcely 
realized the importance of a colonial empire, nor did he 
conceive how soon a great deal of German ambition would 
lie beyond Europe, on the oceans and in continents far 
away. It would have been better in all respects, some 
have thought, had he not seized from France territory in 
Europe, but taken of her colonies instead. So it was that 
some years before the Great War an author wrote, with- 
out being much heeded, that it was still too soon to know 
whether generally the chancellor's policy had really been 
successful. 

With the passing of Bismarck began the second stage 
in the development of the new German nation. Between 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



191 



1864 and 1888 the Empire had been created and made 
the greatest of the European states. From about 1890 
on to 1914 it went forward to greater things; its leaders 
made it a mighty world power and strove at last to make 
it beyond all doubt the greatest power in the world. The 
outlook of German leaders became wider, their ambition 
vaster and grander; they played for great stakes higher 
and more boldly, until in the end, as it seemed to one of 
them, they sought "World Dominion or Downfall." 

In what followed, at first, the young emperor took the 
lead. Some believed that he was rash and might easily 
plunge into a war, for he spoke with stern pride of the 
power of his army. But for more than a quarter of a 
century in his reign there was no great conflict in Europe, 
and often he boasted that he had striven to keep the 
peace. Doubtless he did. But always this desire for 
peace seems to have been on condition that Germany hold 
her superior position in Europe, and that her policy should 
not be thwarted. When there rose up against the alliance 
headed by Germany another great group of powers, and 
it was no longer so easy for Germany's word to be law 
as it had been in Bismarck's time, then German statesmen 
and the emperor strove so hard to maintain the German 
hegemony that one great crisis followed another in Europe 
for the space of ten years. At the end of that time the 
nations were plunged into the greatest of all their wars. 

When in 1890 William II took control of the govern- 
ment and its foreign policy there followed at once a great 
altering of political relations. Bismarck had always kept 
France nearly isolated and alone. In three years after 
this time she was closely joined in an understanding with 
Russia. He had tried by all means to retain Russia's 
friendship, and he had succeeded nearly all of the time. 
But Russia was allowed to draw away now, and almost 
immediately she sought the friendship and became the 
ally of France. Bismarck had desired not to antagonize 



New policy 
of the Ger- 
man Empire 



Results 



Changed 

European 

relations 



192 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



fend of the 
"Reinsur- 
ance" policy 



Closer rela- 
tions with 
Great Brit- 
ain 



Great Britain, and during his time no dangerous mis- 
understanding had arisen; but in less than ten years Ger- 
many entered upon a policy which profoundly alarmed 
Great Britain, and shortly caused her to take her place to- 
gether with Russia and France. 

The secret agreement between Russia and Germany 
in 1887 had been made for three years. Before it expired, 
in 1890, the tsar tried to have it renewed, but Germany 
would not consent. There is a great deal, not yet known, 
relating to all of this; but it has been conjectured that 
one of the important causes of disagreement between 
Bismarck and William II was concerning relations with 
Russia; that Bismarck would have had the understanding 
renewed and would have held Russia fast to the Empire, but 
that the young emperor now had other plans which ran 
counter to continuing this friendship. It has been thought 
also that this was the time when the government of Germany 
began to cherish ambitions in the Balkans and Turkey. 
If this were the case, then most probably it would soon be 
as impossible for Germany to remain in close friendship with 
Russia as for Austria-Hungary since 1876. "My foreign 
policy remains and will remain the same as it was in the 
time of my grandfather," was the message William sent 
to the tsar. But the Russian ambassador believed that 
Germany in the future would have greater regard for the 
alliance with Austria-Hungary. And so it was, for that 
alliance now became stronger with every year, until at last 
it was the closest in Europe. 

It also seemed to the Russian ambassador, who wrote 
of these changes, that Germany now counted on getting 
the friendship of Great Britain to replace that of Russia, 
and even that Great Britain might be added to the Triple 
Alliance. It might, indeed, have seemed to him that 
there was some chance of bringing this about. Friendly 
relations with England were a tradition. The mother of 
the German emperor was a daughter of Queen Victoria, 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



193 



whose husband, Albert, had been a German. There were 
many people in England at this time who learned from the 
school of Freeman and Carlyle how excellent were German 
things, and how much that was good in England had been 
inherited from Germany of old; I^ord Salisbury, prime 
minister at this time, believed strongly in best possible 
relations with the German Empire. Good relations with 
Britain were, accordingly, easy to maintain and improve 
for the present, though she would most probably not have 
entered into any alliance, and it is not certainly known 
that Germany desired her to do so. 

The new German policy attracted less attention than 
might have seemed possible. The close relations between 
Germany and Russia had been largely a secret. The 
attention of men was still fastened mostly on the older 
issues, the feeling between France and Germany, and the 
rivalry between England and France, and England and 
Russia. But a very significant event occurred the year 
before Bismarck retired. In 1889 William II went to 
Constantinople and visited Abdul Hamid, the sultan of 
Turkey. As men afterward saw this event, it seemed 
the beginning of an epoch in the politics of Europe. 

In the Middle Ages the German people had fought 
against the Slavs to the east, subduing or pressing them 
back, and extending eastward their German dominion. In 
this manner had the old Prussia been acquired, in this way 
Austria's empire built up. In the course of this movement 
to the east and the south some Germans had pushed 
beyond the mass of their fellows and made isolated settle- 
ments, which in the nineteenth century were still flourish- 
ing in Hungary, and in Poland, in the western and south- 
ern parts of Russia, and even far off in the Balkans. For 
a long while some Germans had dreamed of a day when 
these detached groups, and the aliens surrounding, might 
be incorporated in a greater German Empire. Heinrich 
Heine prophesied that Germans would some day possess 



Relations 
with Turkey 



Expansion of 
the German 
people in the 
past 



194 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Drang nach 
Osten 



The German 
Empire and 
Turkey 



lands as distant as the Ukraine. In the earlier half of 
the nineteenth century other Germans advised coloniza- 
tion in the valley of the Danube and beyond, saying that 
here was the best of fields for German expansion. After 
the Franco-German War, colonization of Asia Minor 
and Mesopotamia was suggested in the dominions of the 
sultan of Turkey. About 1880 a certain one urged his 
fellows not to emigrate to America, as they were doing: 
"We must create a central Europe by conquering for 
German colonization large spaces to the east of our 
frontiers." 

Now in the new generation which followed that of Bis- 
marck such thoughts constantly gained greater impor- 
tance, until gradually the idea of Drang nach Osten ^ or 
advance by Germans to the east, came to be the under- 
lying motive in German foreign affairs, and at last prin- 
cipal among the causes leading to the great European 
W^ar. William II sought the friendship of the sultan of 
Turkey. England had previously been friend and pro- 
tector of the Turks, but events like the British occupation 
of Egypt had caused her influence to wane. In 1898, 
about the time when England and France were embroiled 
in the Fashoda dispute concerning the upper Sudan, about 
the time when Germany began her great naval expansion, 
William went to Constantinople again, and, going on to 
Jerusalem and Damascus, proclaimed himself the protector 
of Turkey and announced that he was the friend of 
Mohammedans all over the world. Year after year 
German representatives established the influence of their 
country more strongly. Most people had no conception 
how far they were succeeding, but in 1914 it was suddenly 
found that Turkey was more closely bound to Germany 
and Austria than was Italy, a member of the Triple Alli- 
ance; that she was actually a vassal of Germany, at 
whose behest she could be pushed into a war where her 
very existence must be staked. 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



195 



In controlling Turkey and developing her resources the 
most important thing done by Germans was the con- 
struction of the Bagdad Railway. As early as 1875 
German engineers had built for the Turkish Government 
a railway across Anatolia, connecting Konia with Skutari, 
opposite Constantinople. Thirteen years later this rail- 
way was transferred to a German company. Now in 
1899, the year following the emperor's second visit, the 
sultan granted him a concession to extend this railroad 
across Asiatic Turkey down to the Persian Gulf. There 
was, however, at the head of the Gulf, and controlling the 
outlet to its waters, the district of Koweit, ruled by a 
sheik who gave little obedience to the sultan. With 
this sheik the British immediately made a treaty, so as 
to block the future completion of the railroad, which they 
conceived might be dangerous to them. None the less, 
work was taken up and continued at intervals until just 
before 1914 the road which had been constructed to 
Aleppo, with a branch down along the eastern Mediter- 
ranean coast, had also been taken on almost completely 
through to Bagdad, and the control and development of 
Asiatic Turkey had been put into the hands of the Ger- 
mans. 

It was not possible to exaggerate the importance of this 
undertaking. If the road were ever completed Germany, 
provided she had also secured control of the intervening 
territory in Europe, would be mistress, perhaps, of the 
most important line of communication in the world. It 
was in Europe and in Asia that most of the world's 
inhabitants lived. Communication between them had 
till then been mostly by water. Of water routes 
there were two: one long and one short. The long one 
ran down to the south of Africa then up toward India 
and China; for a great while it had been dominated by 
the British, who held India and South Africa, and numer- 
ous stations on the way. The better and the shorter was 



The Bagdad 
Railway 



Mittel- 
europa and 
the Bagh- 
dadbahn 



196 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Strategic 
con- 
sequences 



Changing 
relations in 
Europe 



through the Mediterranean Sea; and this also was even 
more securely in the hands of the British, who held Gibral- 
tar at one end of the sea and the Suez Canal at the other. 
But, after all, communication by these routes was round- 
about and slow. The end of the nineteenth century was 
an era of railroad development, which furnished trans- 
portation swifter and easier than any by water. If only 
the Germans could secure railroad lines leading down 
from their own. northern ports across Austria-Hungary 
and the Balkans to Constantinople, and then connect with 
the Bagdad Railway having a terminus on the Persian 
Gulf, Germany would control the shortest and the best 
route between Europe and Asia, and might in time domi- 
nate a great part of all the world's trade. 

Even more important to a military power were the 
strategic advantages involved. Not only would the Ger- 
mans and their friends, lying between their possible 
enemies, separate them and have them at disadvantage, 
but they would have incomparably the best line of interior 
communications for moving troops swiftly, a route, 
moreover, lying right across the most important part of 
the world, and perhaps capable of being rendered in- 
vulnerable to attacks by sea power. Furthermore, as 
some Germans boasted, one part of this railway system 
would lead close to Egypt, and always be a threat to 
the British there, while on the Persian Gulf they could 
at any time put masses of troops to strike over at India 
far more quickly than the British could bring reinforce- 
ments. In short, they would have in this railway system 
an instrument for making Germany the greatest power 
in the world. 

This new policy about the Bagdad Railway, the Bal- 
kans, and a central Europe under the influence of Germany 
developed gradually in the period after 1888, but it became 
ever more prominent and important during the years 
just before the war. Long before that time the politics 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



197 



of continental Europe had been altered completely. 
Russia, first dropped from close friendship by Germany, 
then antagonized by German policy in Turkey and in the 
Balkans, had entered into the Dual Entente or "Alliance" 
with France, opposing not only Austria-Hungary but 
Germany as well. And gradually the Triple Alliance 
changed. Italy, as time went on, had less interest in her 
connection with the Central Powers, and the old causes of 
antagonism with France slowly passed almost entirely. 
It was often believed after 1902 that Italy no longer had 
great interest in continuing in the Alliance, especially as 
her policy conflicted more with that of Austria-Hungary 
in the Adriatic and the western Balkans, and that she re- 
mained a member more through fear of withdrawing than 
because she desired to continue. The Triple Alliance 
continued to be renewed, but so far as Italy was concerned 
evidently no strong tie now remained. Very different was 
it with Austria-Hungary. When the alliance with Ger- 
many was made in 1879 Bismarck believed that the con- 
nection might not endure. Nevertheless, during his time 
it grew stronger; and now, with the development of the new 
German policy, connection with Austria-Hungary became 
firmer each year, since that connection was indispensable 
to the success of Germany's schemes. The empire 
planned in Middle Europe and nearer Asia had at one of 
its ends Asiatic Turkey and at the other the great German 
state. The scheme could never be fulfilled unless Austria- 
Hungary and the Balkans, which lay in between, were 
kept in close alliance or controlled. Therefore, firm alli- 
ance with the Dual Monarchy came to be the very corner- 
stone of German foreign policy ; and it was more and more 
evident that Germany would give Austria-Hungary sup- 
port, and that for the sake of her own greatness and ambi- 
tions she never could fail to do so. And the attachment 
of Austria-Hungary to the German Empire became equally 
strong. Not onl}^ did the Dual JNIonarchy require the 



The oppos- 
ing alliances 



Strength- 
ening of the 
alliance be- 
tween the 
German Em- 
pire and 
Austria- 
Hungary 



198 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Rivalry with 
Great Brit- 
ain 



Previous 
relations be- 
tween Ger- 
many and 
England 



support of its powerful neighbor against such a great rival 
as Russia, but the ambitions of Austria-Hungary coincided 
largely with German plans. If Germans hoped to control 
a great railroad down through the Balkans and across 
Turkey to the Persian Gulf, so did Austria-Hungary 
desire to be the greatest power in the western Balkans, 
rule all the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, and extend 
down to the Mediterranean at Salonica. 

During these same years further change in interna- 
tional affairs brought another vast alteration. So im- 
mense was the development of the German Empire, so 
colossal its strength as it grew, that German ambitions 
developed in every direction — not only in eastern and 
central Europe, in sharper rivalry with Russia, but also 
on the seas and in distant places, which brought Germany 
at last into direct competition with England. As this 
came about, it was very evident that a second of Bis- 
marck's axioms had been discarded. He had always 
striven to keep Russia as a friend and avoid any estrange- 
ment with Britain. The Germany of William II hesitated 
not to challenge and contend with them both. 

Previously relations between Germany and England 
had been very good. Between Englishmen and Germans 
there had long been friendship with little memory of old 
wrong or warfare, and there was always a certain feeling of 
kinship because of blood and common inheritance and 
speech. Spain, France, Russia had been the rivals of 
England, not the Germans. Englishmen had viewed the 
establishment of German unity with a great deal of 
sympathy and admiration. Some did question the 
methods by which this had been brought about, but actu- 
ally for a time after 1871 the interests of Britain and 
the German Empire did not conflict and there was no 
direct cause for any hostile feeling. Great Britain was a 
sea power and her chief interests were outside of Europe. 
Germany was not a naval power during Bismarck's time 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



199 



and her interest was altogether in keeping that which she 
had just achieved, first place in continental affairs. Pres- 
ently, it is true, the immense maritime and industrial 
development of Germany brought keen competition and 
aroused some unpleasant feeling. But all this awakened 
no hostility in Britain, and as time went on it was seen 
that England could well hold her own. 

In the later years of his power Bismarck had seen in- 
creasing need of a strong navy to guard the Empire's 
growing commercial and colonial interests, but the great 
change came after he had been dismissed, with the rise 
of the new school of statesmen, who looked beyond 
Europe and would make Germany the greatest of the 
great. The German army' was incomparably^ the strong- 
est in the world, but they were conscious of a surplus 
of strength in their country, not needed for the army, 
and they began to cherish the plan of making Germany 
a great naval power and a seeker for colonies also. It 
was probably foreseen that this would inevitably bring 
very different relations with England. Hitherto Britain 
had been on her guard against France and Russia, both 
of them, strong naval powers and active rivals in Africa and 
Asia. For some years it had been her purpose to maintain 
the "two-power standard," to keep her fleet stronger 
than the two next greatest navies combined. In 1889 
Great Britain had undertaken a comprehensive scheme 
of naval increase, and by 1898, when a crisis developed 
with France, the French had yielded completely, so over- 
whelming was British strength on the sea. Britain had 
no large army, and so could not defend herself against 
the great standing armies of European states if ever they 
reached her shores. Her sole reliance was on command 
of the sea, and it was justly felt that if this were lost, 
then all would be gone and the British Empire destroyed 
beyond hope. The British people accordingly were 
resolved at all costs to maintain their superiority on the 



Germany 
and British 
sea power 



Increase of 
British naval 
strength 



200 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



German 
ambitions 
on the sea 



The Naval 
Laws, 18Q8, 
IQOO 



ocean, and would probably come to regard with much 
dread any nation who challenged this position. 

Suddenly and in dramatic way the German Govern- 
ment did do this. Germans were building up a great 
commerce, which was not interfered with by the British, 
but which they knew could be stopped or destroyed, 
if the British tried to do it. More and more they de- 
sired colonies and markets abroad. They had begun to 
seek colonies too late. There was little left for them to 
take. But they felt that they had better chance of being 
considered in distant places if they had a strong war 
fleet to establish their communications. They considered 
that the great British Empire, as well as the new French 
colonial empire, had been made possible by naval 
power. In this new era of great German ambitions the 
leaders felt that the German Empire was incomplete so 
long as it had no strong navy. 

The lead was taken by Admiral von Tirpitz and the 
emperor himself. There was opposition among the older 
school of thinkers in Germany, but after much effort a 
bill was passed by the Reichstag in 1898 providing for 
a great naval increase. The law provided for expending, 
during a course of years, 1,000,000,000 marks, and was con- 
sidered to be the most ambitious naval programme under- 
taken by any state in the memory of man. That same 
year the Flottenverein (Navy League) was established, to 
interest the people in naval expansion. It had 600,000 
members in two years, and shortly after a million. A 
vast amount of educational work and propaganda was 
done by this organization, and it was most successful in 
arousing the people. Much greater development soon 
followed. In 1900 a vaster sum was appropriated, and 
plans made for a navy twice as powerful as that provided 
two years before. 

Such startling naval increase affected other powers at 
once and profoundly. It began to seem that Germany 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



201 



was about to attempt upon the water what she had once 
succeeded in doing on the land; and this was an ominous 
thing when the triumphs of her armies were recalled. But 
of all Germany's neighbors none saw herself threatened 
so greatly as England. As this new German navy was 
built up Great Britain might be endangered, perhaps, by 
the German Empire more than by France. Moreover, 
the very preamble of the law of 1900 seemed directed 
against England. "Germany must have a battle fleet 
so strong that even for an adversary with the greatest sea 
power a war against it would involve such dangers as to 
imperil his own position in the world." "The ocean is 
indispensable to the greatness of Germany," said the 
emperor about the same time. "As my grandfather re- 
organized the army, so I shall reorganize my navy." And 
in 1901: "Our future lies upon the water." 

There was, indeed, a great turning-point about 1898. 
In that year occurred the crisis between Britain and 
France, in which the French yielded, but remained filled 
with savage hatred and anger. On the other hand, Ger- 
many was still well liked in Great Britain. We now know 
that for some years certain leaders in Germany and in 
Britain had been striving to establish an entente. But 
during the Boer War, which began in 1899, Germans 
gave to the Boers such sympathy and encouragement 
as they could, and might perhaps have intervened if 
England had not controlled the sea. Next year, when 
German naval plans were so greatly enlarged, Englishmen 
began pondering upon the situation. It was difficult 
for most of them to conceive that Britain could be in any 
danger, for British supremacy on the seas was a tradition, 
and British control had been unquestioned since the day 
of Trafalgar. None the less, a new generation was coming 
into public life which saw things in terms of altered condi- 
tions, which believed that in the last generation Germany 
had increased so much more greatly than England, and 



Apprehen- 
sion in 
England 



The diplo- 
matic revo- 
lution, 
1904-7 



202 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Great 
Britain not 
safe in 
isolation 



Growing un- 
easiness in 
England 



The Dread- 
naught 



that this greater Germany now bade fair to be so very 
powerful on the sea that Britain was no longer safe as 
before, aloof in her old isolation. They believed that she 
could no longer wisely stand alone, and that she should 
enter into closer relations with friends in Europe and 
everywhere else in the world. Apparently the leader of 
this group in England was King Edward VII, who came to 
the throne in 1901. He seems to have understood how 
greatly conditions had changed. At the same time he 
had a sincere admiration for France. Therefore, he took 
the lead in seeking her friendship. As a result of the work 
of some of the new leaders in England and some of the new 
statesmen in France, the two nations soon settled all their 
differences, and in 1904 entered into the friendly under- 
standing of the Entente Cordiale. Three years later, under 
what seemed increasing menace of German naval expan- 
sion, Britain and Russia settled their differences also. Ac- 
cordingly, by 1907 the new naval policy of Germany had 
brought England out of her long aloofness from European 
affairs into close and friendly relations with France and 
cordial relations with Russia. 

Each year the leaders and statesmen of Britain saw 
greater peril across the North Sea. Everywhere they 
settled all their outstanding differences, not only with 
France and with Russia, but with Italy and the United 
States, and they had already made alliance with Japan. 
British naval forces, once scattered all over the world, 
were silently drawn in and concentrated in the waters 
about Britain and Ireland. But the uneasiness was felt 
rather for the future than the immediate present, since it 
was believed that England had such great superiority on 
the sea that it would be a long while before Germany's 
utmost efforts could really challenge the British navy. 

A great change presently occurred. It was in 1904-5, 
during the Russo-Japanese War, that modern warships 
were really tested for the first time; and many lessons 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



203 



were learned then. After the great battle of Tsushima 
it was seen, as some experts had before pointed out, that 
high speed, which would enable a warship to take such 
position as it wished, heavy armor, and great guns of long 
range, involved immense superiority at sea. But these 
principles could only be applied at their best on a ship of 
very great size. In 1907 the British launched the Dread- 
naught, a battleship which was the largest, the swiftest, 
and most heavily armored warship that had ever been 
put afloat, and it had also the largest number of giant 
guns of long range. This monster, it was believed, would 
be invulnerable to the attacks of ordinary warships, able 
to overtake or outrange an antagonist, always able to 
choose its own range, and beyond the enemy's range batter 
the enemy to pieces. The Dreadnaught made the older 
warships antiquated. For a moment Britain seemed to 
have got great superiority over all her rivals, but actu- 
ally she had begun a revolution which could soon bring 
her temporary disadvantage. Great Britain had the 
largest number of the older vessels, and it was possession 
of them which gave her such lead over the German navy. 
Germany, with her new naval programme, was building the 
greatest number of new ships, and immediately she altered 
the plans and began making new vessels of the Dreadnaught 
type. She was building swiftly and with such secrecy 
that it was difficult to know how swift her progress was. 
It was evident to the thinking that all unexpectedly she 
had a chance to overcome England's naval preponderance 
and threaten her command of the seas. 

Even though it was evident that relations between the 
two countries were steadily growing worse, most of the 
English people could not quickly understand the large 
changes occurring, or the altered position of affairs. But 
now appeared a play, said to have been written at the wish 
of government officials. An Englishman's Home. It por- 
trayed a nation so ignorant of its condition as to be without 



Lessons of 
the Russo- 
Japanese 
War 



The Naval 
Panic 



204 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



An English- 
man's 
Home 



Growing 
alarm and 
suspicion 



fear, when it was really without means of defense. It 
told of England suddenly invaded, and unable to resist, 
of an Englishman shot for defending his home. It had 
little merit as a play, but it stirred the English people to 
their depths, and aroused them at last as the warnings of 
statesmen and writers had never been able to do. There 
was profound alarm and depression, during what was 
known as the Naval Panic of 1909. Some Englishmen felt 
hopeless, some wanted a great army, but most cried for 
huge naval increase, and this was swiftly undertaken. 
Eight great battleships were proposed for that year, and 
actually construction was so rapidly advanced that Britain 
after a short time of anxiety found herself, not indeed 
with a navy greater than the two next most powerful 
navies, but with a fleet considerably stronger than the 
battle fleet of the German Empire. 

No longer was there any doubt about dangerous rivalry 
between the two powers. Many people in both countries 
declared that there was no reason for conflict, and sincerely 
deplored the growing suspicion and ill will, but uneasiness 
and anger increased. In both countries great newspapers 
and periodicals did not cease to point out how the foe 
threatened vital interests, and that preparations must be 
hastened so as to be ready for inevitable conflict. In 
England men recalled what had been done to France, and 
noted with alarm the utterances of German jingoes. In 
Germany the Flotteiiverein taught that England had ever 
been the greedy enemy in Germany's way, and that real 
greatness could come to the Fatherland only after a war of 
liberation against Britain. Germans believed that the 
British would suddenly try to destroy their fleet. English- 
men believed that Germans might suddenly try to dash 
across into England, and, once there, destroy the founda- 
tions of their empire. 

Thus the force of events ranged Great Britain ever 
more closely with Germany's opponents. It may be that 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



205 



most people in both countries abhorred the thought of war 
between the two. Certainly Englishmen felt that their 
preparations were merely defensive. But the great 
danger in the situation arose from the very fact that 
conflict seemed inevitable to so many. Englishmen often 
believed that the ambitions of the German Empire could 
only be fulfilled by sweeping the British Empire away, 
and taking the best parts for a greater Germany. Many 
Germans were taught that while England ruled the seas 
Germany could develop with difficulty and only on suf- 
ferance. Year by year the Germans were told more and 
more that England had joined their enemies in an Einkrei- 
sung, an effort to encircle and crush them. Year by 
year it came to be better understood that Englishmen 
must not make again the mistake of 1870, not again allow 
France to be crushed, for then afterward most probably 
they would have to fight alone against Germany with very 
small chance of success. 

It is evident that before 1914 the policy of Bismarck 
had been discarded, and that some of the things he 
had achieved had been completely lost. Some of Ger- 
many's old friends had drawn off from her, and joined 
France to make a great combination, the Triple Entente. 
The alienation of Russia had been followed by increasing 
distrust on the part of Great Britain, and it was not im- 
probable, in case of war, that Britain would be found with 
Germany's foes. Before the last evil days there was some 
effort to clear away the hostility and suspicion. Germans 
often said they desired the friendship of England, and 
that the two powers working together could ensure the 
peace of the world. Many Englishmen wished that a 
friendly understanding could be reached, and would 
have given much to win the true friendship of the German 
people. They were not, however, willing for their naval 
superiority to be impaired. A British leader speaking in 
1912 declared that naval power was a necessity to English- 



Conflict 
feared in the 
future 



Efforts to 
effect a bet- 
ter under- 
standing 



206 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Statement of 

Winston 

Churchill 



Failure of 
the efforts 



men but not to Germans. To Germany it meant expan- 
sion, to England existence. All the greatness and power, he 
said, won through so many centuries of sacrifice and effort, 
could be swept away if British naval supremacy were 
impaired for a moment. In 1907, at the Second Hague 
Conference, England had proposed limitation of arma- 
ments, but Germany had absolutely refused to consider it. 
Indeed, Germans boasted that they could keep up the 
race, in which England must soon fall behind. English 
leaders announced that their naval construction would be 
regulated by what Germany did. They were most anxi- 
ous to come to some understanding by which both powers 
would cease the construction of so many warships, but a 
decisive supremacy over the German Empire they were 
firmly resolved to maintain. Germans were not willing 
to grant a "naval holiday," but in 1913, at a time when 
great changes in the Balkans caused them to desire in- 
crease of the army above all things, there appeared to be 
some slackening in their building of warships, and peaceful 
men in both countries hoped that better things would re- 
sult. 

One particular effort was made to bring about better 
relations. In 1912 Lord Haldane, lord chancellor, and 
one who loved and respected the best of German things, 
went to Berlin on the emperor's invitation, to try to bring 
about an understanding. Germany proposed a treaty 
between the two countries by which each would engage 
not to attack the other. In event of either being involved 
in war, the other should observe toward the party in- 
volved a benevolent neutrality, though this agreement was 
not to affect existing engagements. England refused, 
for the result, it was thought, would have been to permit 
Germany to support her allies in the Triple Alliance, while 
Britain would have been debarred from supporting against 
German attack her friends, with whom she was not allied. 
The negotiation failed, therefore, but it seemed to smooth 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



207 



the way for a settlement of tlie differences between the 
two. Indeed, in the earlier part of 1914 an Anglo-German 
agreement was drawn up, by which all the principal dif- 
ferences between England and Germany, with respect to 
the Bagdad Railway and Asiatic Turkey, were satisfactor- 
ily arranged, and it almost seemed that Sir Edward Grey 
had at last done with Germany what he had accomplished 
with France in 1904. This treaty, it is said, was to have 
been signed in the autumn, but before that time the Great 
War had begun and Germany and the British Empire 
were locked in a mortal struggle. 

This would seem to have been one of the most tragic 
things in the recent history of Europe. The two great 
antagonists, whose enmity and rivalry had been so omi- 
nously growing, appear almost to have reached a peace- 
able and honorable settlement just before it was too late. 
It is probable that Great Britain was sincere in wishing for 
peaceable settlement of the issues between Germany and 
herself, and that she became at last most willing that the 
German Empire should have room for colonial expan- 
sion. What the real German intentions were cannot 
yet be certainly known. Doubtless many Germans sin- 
cerely desired to have friendship and good understanding 
with Britain. But some critics have seen good reason 
to believe that Germany entered into the negotiations of 
1912 and 1914 not so much because she wished lasting 
peace with Great Britain, but because the military leaders 
hoped to keep Britain inactive until they had first dealt 
with Russia and France. 



Projected 
agreement 
of 1914 



Tragic con- 
sequences 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



General accounts: G. Egelhaaf, Geschichte der Neuesten Zeit 
(4th ed. 1912); B. Gebhardt, Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte 
(2d ed. 1901) ; Graf Ernst Reventlow, Deutschlands Auswdrtige 
Poliiik, 1888-1913 (ed. 1918), strongly nationalist and Pan- 
German; T. Schiemann, Deutschland und die Grosse Poliiik, 



208 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

anno 1901-19H (1902-15); Fiirst Bernhard von Billow, Deutsche 
Politik (ed. 1917), trans, by Marie A. Lewenz, Imperial Germany 
(1914). 

Treaty of Berlin: F. Bamberg, Geschichte der Orientalischen 
Angelegenheit im Zeitraume des Pariser und Berliner Friedens 
(1892); G. B. Guarini, La Germania e la Qnesiione d'Oriente fino 
at Congresso di Berlino, 2 vols. (1898); A. Avril, Negociations 
Relatives au Traite de Berlin, 1875-1886 (1886), documented, 
best account, by a diplomat; B. Brunswick, Le Traite de Berlin, 
Annate et Commente (1878). 

The Triple Alliance: A. C. Coolidge, The Origins of the Triple 
Alliance (1917); W. Fraknoi, Kritische Studien zur Geschichte des 
Dreibundes (1917); A. Singer, Geschichte des Dreihundes (1904); 
A. N. Stieglitz, L' Italic et la Triple Alliance (1906); E. von 
Wertheimer, Graf Jidius Andrdssy, 3 vols. (1910-13); and 
above all, Politische Geheimvertrdge Oesterreich-Ungarns von 
1879-19U, Volume I (1914), edited by Dr. A. F. Pribram from 
the archives of Vienna, constituting one of the most important 
contributions to the history of diplomacy for some time, English 
trans, by D. P. Myers and J. G. D'A. Paul, ed. by A. C. 
Coolidge (1920). 

Relations with Russia: S. Goriainov, "The End of the i\.lli- 
ance of the Emperors," American Historical Revieiv, January, 
1918, based on papers in the Russian archives made accessible 
by the Russian Revolution, and explaining certain important 
matters for the first time. 

Policy before the war : a good brief account is G. W. Prothero, 
German Policy Before the War (1916). 

Germany and England: Charles Sarolea, The Anglo-German 
Problem (1915); B. E. Schmitt, England and Germayiy, 174-0- 
1914 (1916); Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle, German Sea 
Poiver (1913). 

The Bagdad Railway: Andre Cheradame, Le Chemin de Fer 
de Bagdad (1903); D. Eraser, The Short Cid to India (1909); 
Morris Jastrow, The War and the Bagdad Raihvay (1917); E. 
Lewin, The German Road to the East (1916) ; G. Mazel, Le Chemin 
de Fer de Bagdad (1911) ; Paul Rohrbach, Die Bagdadbahn (1902). 

Biographies and memoirs: Margaretha von Poschinger, 
Kaiser Friedrich, 3 vols. (1898-1900), trans. Life of the Em- 
peror Frederick (1901); H. Welschinger, L'Empereur Frkleric 
III, 1831-1888 (1917); A. H. Fried, The German Emperor and the 
Peace of the World (1912) ; (Christian Gauss, editor). The German 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 209 

Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances (1915); Hermann 
Freiherr von Eckhardstein, Lebenserinnerungen und Politische 
Denkwiirdigkeiten, 2 vols. (1920), contains some interesting and 
important information upon attempts to draw Germany and 
England together; Fiirst Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillings- 
fiirst, Denhvilrdigkeiten, 2 vols. (ed. 1907), trans, by G. W. 
Chrystal (1906). 



The down- 
fall of 
France 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RECOVERY OF FRANCE— THE 
DUAL ALLIANCE 

Frangais! 

Le peuple a devance la Chambre, qui hesitait. Pour sauver la patrie 
en danger, il a demande la Republique. 

Proclamation du Gouvernement de la Defense Nationale aux 
Frangais, Septembre 4, 1870: Archives Diplomatiques, 1871- 
1872, ii. 503. 

Si la France est attaquee par rAllemagne, ou par I'ltalie soutenue 
par I'Allemagne, la Russie emploiera toutes ses forces disponibles 
pour attaquer I'Allemagne. 
Si la Russie est attaquee par I'Allemagne, ou par I'Autriche soutenue 
par I'Allemagne, la France emploiera toutes ses forces disponibles 
pour combattre TAllemagne. 

Military Convention, August 1892 (Basis of the Dual Alliance) : 
Documents Diplomatiques, U Alliance Franco-Russe (1918). 

If the rise of the German Empire affords the most 
striking example of the swift growth of a European power, 
France after 1871 gives the best instance of the recovery 
of a people crushed down by terrible defeat. Before 1870 
France was the leading state on the Continent. Her 
armies had the greatest reputation, and were supposed 
to be the best in the world. Paris was the center of 
European diplomacy. Frenchmen were the leaders in 
international affairs. But the events of the Franco- 
German War changed all this at once and completely. 
France was utterly defeated. The German Empire 
suddenly took first place in Europe. The reputation of 
French arms was entirely destroyed for the time. And 
there were few who could really think that France would 
again contend successfully with her powerful and victori- 

210 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



211 



ous neighbor. Berlin now held the place that Paris long 
had had, and Bismarck directed the diplomacy of Europe. 

The months between July, 1870, and June, 1871, have 
been remembered by the French as L' Annie Terrible, the 
terrible year. In the course of that time France had been 
crushed to the dust by the foe, then torn by the uprising 
of the Commune in Paris. She had lost two important 
frontier provinces, with 1,600,000 inhabitants. From the 
war itself she had suffered casualties of almost half a mil- 
lion. Her war materials had been captured. The Ger- 
mans had carried destruction and suffering over a wide 
extent of the country. And there had been an indemnity 
of five milliards of francs to pay to the victors, while the 
cost of the war had been ten milliards more. Germans 
believed that France was so far crushed that she could 
not recover or be dangerous to them again for a long time ; 
and the friends of France could only look to the future 
with a hope which they could not yet feel. 

Yet France began to recover almost at once. Soon 
she had risen up so far that German generals were filled 
with the uneasiness that always comes to the strong 
who have abused their strength, and Bismarck devoted 
himself to keeping France without friends and surrounding 
Germany with allies. After the defeats of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries Spain slowly sank in decadence, 
nor did she ever grow great again. So it was with Sweden 
after her conflict with Russia, and Holland after strug- 
gling with France. Austria never regained her old 
place after 1866, and it has often been so with others. 
Either they had completely exhausted their strength 
and resources, or else they lacked stamina and the 
power of recuperation. But no nation has ever had the 
qualities of greatness more thoroughly than the French. 
From the ruin of the Hundred Years' War, from the 
losses of her wars of religion, from the disasters of the last 
years of Louis XIV, and from the complete overthrow 



L'Annee 
Terrible 



The in- 
herent 
greatness 
of France 



212 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Causes of the 

communard 

attempt 



Conditions 
in Paris 



when Napoleon was defeated by Europe, always she 
easily recovered, because of the excellence and strength, 
the vitality, the brave character, the inexhaustible courage 
of French men and women. At present, after the long 
drain and exhaustion of the Great War, in which she bore 
the brunt, the best augury of the recovery of France from 
her grievous weakness is the memory of what she did in 
other times. And for Germany, in this time of humilia- 
tion and ruin, the example of France after 1871 may be, 
perhaps, the best encouragement that she can have. 

Before the recovery began, however, there was one more 
terrible disaster. The Commune of Paris came at the end 
of the war, while confusion was still reigning in France. 
Paris had long been the stronghold of republican, radical, 
and socialist sentiment. Many of the workmen of the 
city had hearkened to the preaching of doctrines which 
were not only opposed to empire and monarchy but to 
much of the existing social system; and they had taught 
that very sweeping changes would be necessary to bring 
happiness to the mass of the people. Opportunity now 
came for the application of some of these teachings. The 
siege of Paris was just over, and Paris had greatly suffered. 
In the general prostration of business many of the work- 
ingmen had no employment. They had until recently 
been members of the National Guard which undertook 
the defence of the city, but the Assembly which had been 
elected to make peace with the Germans now dissolved the 
Guard. At the same time the Assembly decided to hold 
its meetings in Versailles instead of in Paris. The people 
of Paris had proclaimed a republic in 1870; but the 
Assembly was monarchist and conservative, and the lib- 
erals and radicals of the cities distrusted what it might 
do. Moreover, payment of obligations, which had been 
suspended by a moratorium during the siege, was now 
ordered, and immense hardship resulted to a vast number 
of people who had no employment or business and so 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



213 



could not pay their debts. Hence a great number of 
poor, hungry, savage people, who still had the arms with 
which they had fought against the Germans, stood in 
idleness, distrusting their government, and very ready 
to follow new leaders. 

In the Middle Ages, when nations had not yet arisen 
and before states were completely formed, cities, and 
among them notably Paris, had often had much inde- 
pendence and right to regulate their own affairs. In 
medieval France, as elsewhere in western Europe, a local 
jurisdiction, whether rural or urban, with powers of self- 
government was known as communitas or commune. 
Afterward, in the later period, in France commune was 
the name of one of the small administrative districts into 
which the country was divided. Now France was strongly 
organized with almost everything regulated by a central 
government, of which the radicals did not approve. 
Therefore they taught that improvement could come 
only through decentralization of the power of the state, 
with the management of affairs in the communes. Thus the 
different communes, which had different interests, would 
be able to manage affairs to their own best advantage, and, 
especially, the cities, more liberal than the rural districts, 
would be able to develop without interference from a 
government based largely on the country. This scheme 
was supported by some republicans who feared that 
monarchy would be restored by the central government, 
and by socialists, who believed that thus they could effect 
the reforms which they sought for. In Paris the idea was 
taken up by the discontented. After some conflict, in 
March, 1871, they seized control of the commune^ and the 
red flag of the socialists was adopted. 

The men of this Commune appealed to the people of 
France to follow them in their revolution, and for a 
moment it seemed to observers that France, just defeated 
by the Germans, was now about to split up into pieces. 



The Com- 
mune of 
Paris, 1871 



The Com- 
mune over- 
thrown 



214 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 

indemnity 
paid 



Reforms : 
local govern- 
ment and 
the army 



But the revolution in Paris was not destined to spread 
like the uprising of 1917 in disorganized Russia. The 
people were against such innovation. As the French 
prisoners were returned from Germany, the Assembly 
made ready to overthrow the Commune, and this was done 
after a second terrible siege during April and May, and a 
fearful week of fighting in the streets. The city suffered 
far more from the bombardment of the French armies 
and the incendiarism of the Communalists than it had 
from the Germans, and the government showed no mercy 
in the vengeance which it took. The radicals and the 
socialists and extremists were completely put down, and 
again they nursed in silence savage hatred against the 
bourgeoisie who had crushed them. 

France now proceeded to the work of restoration and 
building for the future. May 10, 1871, the Treaty of 
Frankfort was ratified by the National Assembly. This 
Assembly, having chosen Thiers to exercise the executive 
power, was now carrying on the government of the coun- 
try. The first tasks were to free the occupied dis- 
tricts of Germans by paying the indemnity. The French 
people responded magnificently to the appeals of the 
government, and far more money was subscribed to the 
loans than was needed. In the autumn of 1873, six 
months before the term allowed by the Treaty, all the 
indemnity had been paid, and the last German soldiers 
were out of France. Financiers all over the world were 
surprised at the amount of money which French peasants 
and workmen had brought forth. There were not wanting 
Germans who declared that if their government had known 
what France had, a greater amount would have been 
taken; and that if France were ever conquered by Ger- 
many again, the indemnity would be vastly greater. 

For two years, until May 24, 1873, Thiers and the 
Assembly governed France. During his time two im- 
portant reforms were made. In 1871 the excessive cen- 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



215 



tralization of the government, which had prevailed since 
Napoleon I, was partly undone when a larger amount of 
local government was established. Local voters were to 
elect the council of the commune, and in the smaller 
communes the mayor was to be chosen by the council. The 
central government was to appoint the mayors only in 
the principal towns. In 1872 the army system was re- 
organized, by a law which, in effect, introduced the mili- 
tary system which had given so much success to Prussia. 

As the work of reconstruction proceeded, the most im- 
portant problem was to settle the form of the govern- 
ment. Thiers had been appointed by the Assembly. 
The Assembly had been elected for the purpose of making 
peace ; but neither the term of its power nor the extent of 
its powers had been defined. The Assembly did not 
dissolve itself, however, and in the existing state of things 
there was no power able to dismiss it. In September, 1870, 
the revolutionists in Paris, who overthrew the imperial 
government, had proclaimed a republic. This Republic 
had been promptly acknowledged by the United States, 
and, after a little delay, by the principal governments of 
Europe. But such a government had not been constituted 
by the people, and it was soon evident that the representa- 
tives whom they had elected to the National Assembly 
were not for the most part in favor of a republic in France. 
In August, 1871, however, the Assembly accepted for the 
time being the government existing, and gave to the 
executive the title of "President of the French Republic." 
The Rivet Law by which this was done asserted also that 
the Assembly had constituent powers. Accordingly, 
the Assembly undertook to decide what form of govern- 
ment should be permanently established. 

Most of the members of the Assembly wished a res- 
toration of the monarchy. Some hoped for a Bonapartist 
empire again. Thiers himself had been made executive 
and president because he favored having a king. But as 



A republic 
proclaimed 



The Re- 
public 
established 




NOTE According to Treaty of Versailles, June 1919, the Sarre Basin beconus . 
International territory for a period of 15 Years. Coal Mines in this territory/^^ 
are ceded to France. Plebiscite will determine Sovereignty. y^ 



9. FRANCE IN 1920 



216 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



217 



the months passed Thiers concluded that the best inter- 
ests of France required the establishment of a republic, 
and so the majority in the Assembly displaced him, choos- 
ing now Marshal MacMahon as president, since they be- 
lieved that he would willingly resign as soon as monarchy 
could be reestablished. And perhaps it might have been 
restored now, except that the monarchists were divided 
in two parties, the Legitimists and those who supported 
the House of Orleans. It was hoped that these two 
branches of the Bourbon family could unite, but it proved 
impossible to bring this about. Thus time drifted on, 
with no permanent government established, and the people 
showing more and more that they wished a republic. 
After a while those who desired a monarchy, but be- 
lieved it unwise to insist on their wishes, combined with 
those who wanted a republic, and agreed upon a conserva- 
tive arrangement. In 1875 a series of "organic laws" 
in effect constituted a republican government, and are 
often referred to as the Constitution of 1875. A republic 
was not formally set up. It was, indeed, merely recognized 
in the phrase "President of the Republic," in a proviso 
which could only be carried by one vote in a chamber of 
705. The French Republic has endured now consider- 
ably longer than any government in France since 1789, but 
it was established unwillingly and with great hesitation, 
and never formally proclaimed. 

The government of the French Republic was based 
on models which the English-speaking people had worked 
out in the experience of a long time. In some respects 
it resembles the American form, but substantially the 
British system was followed. The executive power is 
apparently vested in a president, who is elected for 
seven years by the two chambers of the legislative body 
meeting together as a National Assembly. An outsider 
might think that he really is head of the army and navy 
and that he really administers the laws and appoints the 



The mon- 
archists fail 
to combine 



Govern- 
ment : the 
president 



218 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 

legislative 

body 



The French 
system 



oflBcials. But the power which seems to be in his hands 
is not real Hke that of the president of the United States 
nor that which was held by the German Kaiser. His 
position is rather like that of the king of England, except 
that he has more power. Actually, as in England, the 
executive and administrative powers are in the hands of 
the ministry. As in Great Britain, also, the ministry is 
entirely dependent upon a majority in the Chambers, the 
legislative body. It is in the legislative body, then, that 
power actually lies. 

The legislative is composed of two houses, a Senate and 
a Chamber of Deputies. The Senate consists of 300 mem- 
bers elected indirectly by electoral colleges for a term of 
nine years, one third to be renewed every three years. 
By the Constitution of 1875 some of the members were to be 
elected for life, but this was done away with in 1884. The 
more important house, however, is the Chamber of 
Deputies, whose members are elected by manhood suf- 
frage for a term of four years. The ministry is responsible 
to this parliament, and practically to the lower branch, 
the Chamber of Deputies, which is all-powerful in the 
making of laws and passing appropriations. Actually, the 
ministry is a committee of the Chamber, as the cabinet 
in Britain is of the House of Commons. 

This system of government, which makes France a 
parliamentary republic, differs in one very important 
respect from what is substantially the British system and 
from what really prevails in the United States. In both 
these countries, while there may be several political par- 
ties, there have usually been two important parties, op- 
posing each other, and contending in elections for control 
of the government, the result of such elections giving 
the control to one or the other, the second party being 
then the opposition. This system tends to make political 
stability in Great Britain, since the ministry, usually 
resting on the solid support of one of the great parties. 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



219 



remains In power until the opposition gets a majority for 
itself. But in France, as in most continental countries, 
the two-party system does not prevail. Rather, there are 
many parties, often differing from each other only a little, 
and representing various political affiliations. No one of 
them is large enough to control a majority of the votes 
in the legislative assembly, and support for a ministry can 
be obtained only by effecting a combination, or as it is 
called in France, a bloc, of those parties which are willing 
to make common cause. But this brings instability and 
shortness of tenure, since the fall of a ministry can easily 
be brought about by some of the parties withdrawing from 
the hloc to enter into new combinations. Therefore 
ministries in France, as In Italy, often change with be- 
wildering rapidity, causing outsiders uninformed to be- 
lieve that the French are fickle in politics and not yet 
trained in governing themselves. Such is not the case; 
a different system is producing results different from those 
obtained in English-speaking countries. Foreign critics 
declare that such insecurity of ministries tends to weaken 
administration and hamper France In her dealings with 
other countries. Frenchmen, admitting this, assert that 
their system nevertheless represents, more delicately than 
does the British, different shades of political thought. 

The administration of the central government in France 
has all too frequently been debased by corruption, jobbery, 
scandal, and intrigue. Nevertheless, generally speaking, 
since the establishment of the Republic in 1875, French- 
men have gone steadily forward on the way of learning 
real self-government. Of all tasks that is one of the 
hardest. The English people developed It slowly and 
painfully during a long course of time. The French 
tried to establish It suddenly in 1791. In a few years it 
was evident that they had failed, and most Frenchmen 
were willing to have Napoleon give them strong govern- 
ment even though it was despotic. Again in 1848 a re- 



The Bloc 



Develop- 
ment of 
self-govern- 
ment in 
France 



220 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Government 
and people 



Local gov- 
ernment 
in France 



public was established, but this again was easily and 
quickly overthrown. When a third republic "was pro- 
claimed in 1870, it might seem that it also had little chance 
to survive; many were opposed to it, and many believed it 
must soon disappear. The French people, however, were 
learning more about self-government and republican in- 
stitutions as time went on, and the Third Republic be- 
lying the prophecies of many of its enemies and some of its 
friends, and acquiring stability year after year, was by 
1920 so thoroughly established that its overthrow seemed 
outside of proper calculations. There can be little doubt 
that this was partly because the people of France got 
more and more acquaintance with self-government in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century. 

It is not sufficient that a constitution be written and 
adopted providing that the people have certain institu- 
tions. Such constitutions in Portugal and in Spain and in 
some of the South American countries result in little more 
than that the elections are controlled by the army and the 
government by a few politicians. In spite of many ex- 
cellent provisions, these constitutions fail because the 
people have little education, little interest in political af- 
fairs, and almost no training in them. Great Britain 
has no written constitution in any single document, and 
yet her government continues stable and firm, and at 
the same time flexible and increasingly democratic; for it 
rests now on the support of a vast number of men and 
women who have considerable acquaintance with the 
management of their government, and who have in- 
herited this knowledge from ancestors who before them 
had interest in the government of the realm. 

Participation by the ordinary man or woman in govern- 
ing can usually not be in the affairs of the central organiza- 
tion but in the smaller and humbler things of the local 
district. The continued success of self-government among 
the people of England is in great measure due to the train- 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



221 



ing which English people long had in the affairs of county 
and parish, to the vigorous local self-government which 
has existed for generations in England. In France this 
had once existed also, but it withered away and disap- 
peared when the strongly centralized monarchy of the 
Old Regime was made by the kings. Matters, which in 
England would have been attended to by the leading men 
of the parish or the county, were in France directed from 
Paris or managed by officials sent out from the central 
government. This tended to produce, as it always does 
for a while, a very efficient government machine; but in 
course of time the people in the localities, having very 
little to do in managing their affairs, to a great extent lost 
their capacity for self-government. Therefore, the first 
two French republics were made at the top rather than the 
bottom, and soon fell for lack of strong foundation in the 
political experience of the people themselves. This was, 
perhaps, apparent to the republican leaders as time went 
on. By the Constitution of 1875 a greater measure of 
local government was provided for. This was extended 
in 1882, when the elected councils of municipalities were 
permitted to elect the mayors, and in 1884 when localities 
were given still larger powers of self-government. Since 
then French people have been slowly learning to some ex- 
tent the art of governing themselves, in the only places 
in which it can be well learned, where they live and carry 
on their own affairs. As they really learned to manage 
the little things themselves, they became able to manage 
the greater affairs, and the foundations of the Republic 
became constantly stronger in the hearts and intelligence 
of the people. 

However admirable the local government of England 
may have been in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, it was for the most part in the hands of the upper 
classes, and the extension of self-government and demo- 
cratic control of affairs in Britain came only slowly in the 



Formerly 
directed 
from Paris 



Education 
improved 
and ex- 
tended 



222 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Education 
necessary 
for the suc- 
cess of self- 
government 



Higher 
education 



nineteenth century. It was accompanied by considerable 
improvement in the education of the mass of the people. 
Self-government may be extended to the people of a 
country, but if they are ignorant and illiterate there can 
be little hope that they will wisely use or really keep 
the powers entrusted to them. This was well understood 
by the republican leaders in France, and they set about 
extending and improving education. If there was to be 
universal suffrage for men, there must be general education 
of the children. In 1881 a law was passed to make pri- 
mary education free of cost to parents and the next year 
it was made compulsory for children from six to thirteen. 
Previous to this time a quarter of the men and more than 
a third of the women of the country were illiterate, and 
education was to a considerable extent, as it had long been, 
in the hands of religious orders and teachers. Gradually 
education was extended until very few men and women 
were unable to read and write, though the percentage of 
illiteracy was never reduced so low as in Germany, which 
had long led the world in the thoroughness and extent 
of its educational work, though not, perhaps, in the final 
excellence of its character. Gradually, also, in France 
education was made entirely secular, and withdrawn com- 
pletely from religious teachers. 

Along with this, moreover, went a splendid development 
of higher education, in upper schools and universities. 
Technical and industrial teaching was not neglected, 
though it never attained the prominence or the reputa- 
tion abroad that the German system got. Foreigners 
who went to Europe for their education went almost al- 
ways to the German Empire rather than to England or 
France; and this was especially true of students from the 
United States, who went to Germany and then developed in 
America the German system of higher education. This was 
due not only to the merits of German universities but also 
to the prestige which Germany enjoyed as the result of her 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



223 



successful wars and her mighty development, though it 
also seems to have resulted in no small part from advertis- 
ing and clever propaganda. But critics realized more 
clearly after a time that the English system and especially 
the French, if they produced less visible efficiency and 
erudition, yet trained the character and cultivated spirit 
and taste, and fineness of soul and good judgment, as the 
more mechanically regulated, state-supervised system of 
Germany never could do. 

So the work of restoration and establishing solidly the 
foundation of the Republic went steadily forward. Bis- 
marck, it is said, favored a republic in France because 
he believed such a government would be unstable and make 
her weak, and because it would also keep her isolated and 
without friends, since France a republic would be alone 
among the monarchies and empires of Europe. For a 
long time she was without allies, but the Republic held 
its own steadily, and while it was disliked by a considerable 
and powerful portion of the population who were anxi- 
ously awaiting its overthrow, it was able to weather each 
crisis that developed. Business became settled; the gov- 
ernment undertook great and expensive schemes of ma- 
terial development, improving railroads and canals; and 
presently the French people found themselves in the 
midst of the greatest prosperity which had come to them 
in the nineteenth century. Taxes were high and there 
was a huge national debt, but this debt was held almost 
entirely in France, and interest payments on it, derived 
from taxes taken from the people, went back to them 
again. 

But however fair the picture may seem now, there was 
much trouble during the time when the improvement 
was gradually taking place. Many times it seemed to out- 
siders that French temperament was such, and so great 
were the difficulties confronting the French leaders, that the 
Republic would endure little longer. There was constant 



Recovery 
and ma- 
terial prog- 
ress 



Dangers 
besetting 
the Republic 



224 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Restoration 
of monarchy 
desired 



The 

Boulanger 

Crisis 



though diminishing danger in the relations with Germany, 
and there were internal problems of the greatest difficulty 
resulting from the opposition of the monarchists and 
clericals, and the relations between Church and State. 

The English, who in government matters are conserva- 
tive but at the same time bold, have made great construc- 
tive constitutional changes, slowly, without violent break. 
In course of time they have altered their monarchy so far 
that of the kingship nothing remains but the name of king, 
and actually their government is far more democratic 
than the governance of most republics. They have clung 
to king and some monarchical forms, however, because of 
attachment to the past, and probably for some time to 
come they will not part with scepter and crown. The 
French, who are more logical and direct in processes of 
thought, did away with monarchy more abruptly, though 
in their case also the alteration could not be achieved at 
once, and restorations, of king or emperor, followed 
the establishment of two republics. There was a con- 
siderable and strong body of people in the country, the 
more conservative ones and those who loved to venerate 
the past, who preferred monarchy to a republic, who dis- 
trusted government by the people, and who did not believe 
that France could be strong and respected until she had re- 
ceived a king once more. After 1871 these men and 
women looked confidently for the fall of the Republic 
through incapacity and weakness; and when the course 
of time disappointed them, they plotted and hoped for an 
opportunity to bring this about. Generally they were 
supported by the clericals, whose policy also they ap- 
proved. 

When the hazards of the first few years after 1871 had 
successfully been passed, the most dangerous crisis came 
in 1888, in the affair of General Boulanger. The general 
was a handsome, striking figure whose very appearance 
excited the admiration and attachment of the unthinking. 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



225 



He made himself popular among the soldiers by some of 
his measures while he was minister of war. Great en- 
thusiasm was worked up for him. He took advantage 
of some scandals of the time, and of certain grievances 
which always exist, and presently let it be known that the 
government needed reforming. It was also told among 
his friends that if he were at the head of affairs, France 
might get revenge on the Germans. He soon had sup- 
porting him, besides the undiscriminating multitude, 
monarchists, clericals, and others. Friends of the Re- 
public feared that if he tried a coujp d'etat, as Louis Napo- 
leon once had, he might indeed be able to seize power. But 
the government was firm, and at the critical moment he 
hesitated to act, and presently fled to Belgium. Then 
he was condemned for plotting against the State. His 
party fell to pieces almost at once, and he died by his own 
hand in exile. Other disquieting times followed, but 
never one so serious again. Once this storm was past, 
evidence multiplied that the Republic was solidly estab- 
lished. Five years later Russia had joined France in a 
Dual Alliance. 

In 1896 began the scandal of the Dreyfus Case, which 
continued to disrupt French society and disturb the gov- 
ernment for the next ten years. Two years previously 
Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, a captain of artillery in the 
French army, had been arrested very secretly and con- 
demned to be imprisoned for life in French Guiana for 
selling military information, it was said. He protested 
his' innocence, and soon his cause was taken up by friends 
and by others who wished justice to be done, and a bitter 
and sensational controversy resulted. After many vicissi- 
tudes, which attracted the attention of people all over 
the world then, but which are of little importance now, 
it was demonstrated that the accused man was innocent 
and that scandalous conditions existed in military circles. 
As this became clear, the French Government undertook 



A coup 
d'Stat ap- 
prehended 



The Dreyfus 
Afifair 



226 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Church 
and State 



The Con- 
cordat of 
1801 



to undo the wrong done, and in the end gave Dreyfus and 
his associates complete and honorable vindication. But 
during the years of passionate struggle, while this end was 
being attained, the government was attacked and under- 
mined by monarchists and reactionaries, by clericals, 
and by many who desired France to be a military power 
more than a democratic state. In the end all of this came 
to naught and was largely forgotten. 

As the years went on still further, with France get- 
ting back some of her old prestige in Europe, prosper- 
ing greatly and increasing her wealth, and making the 
Republic constantly stronger, the French Government 
proceeded to deal with the adjustment of the relations be- 
tween Church and State. In the Middle Ages the Church 
had claimed superiority over all earthly things, supremacy 
over secular government, and immunity from interference 
by the civil power. As stronger secular governments 
developed, their officials refused to accept the supremacy 
of the Church, and attempted, while not interfering with 
religious matters, to subject ecclesiastical matters, or the 
things that concerned church regulation, to the civil 
authority of the State. Some of the greatest and most 
memorable struggles in medieval times arose from con- 
flicts between these two powers. In the period of the 
Reformation and of the development of strong nation 
states the matter was settled differently in various places. 
In Lutheran countries the Church was made strictly sub- 
ordinate to the State, and in England the Church became 
part of the government itself. In Catholic countries vari- 
ous arrangements had been made. 

In France of the nineteenth century the settlement was 
one which had been arranged between Napoleon and Pope 
Pius VII, the so-called Concordat of 1801. This arrange- 
ment provided that the churches and buildings, which 
along with the church lands had been confiscated during 
the French Revolution, and which were in 1801 the prop- 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



227 



erty of the people, should be granted to the use of the 
clergy. The higher ecclesiastics, the archbishops and bish- 
ops, were to be appointed by the French government 
with the consent of the pope. Such appointments had 
been one of the great causes of struggle between Empire 
and Papacy in the Middle Ages, and between kings of 
England and popes, and had usually then been settled 
by a compromise like the Concordat. The lower ec- 
clesiastics, the priests, were to be appointed by the bishops 
with the consent of the government of France. The 
Church was controlled to a considerable extent by the 
State, and supported by it as part of the State, for the 
salaries of the ecclesiastics were paid by the government. 
On the other hand, in the government the Church had 
much influence and power. This condition of affairs con- 
tinued on through the nineteenth century, with the cleri- 
cals looking back fondly to the time before the Revolution, 
detesting the republicans, supporting and teaching mon- 
archical principles, and hoping for a restoration of kings. 

After 1871 the system worked less well. Those who 
supported the Republic believed that Church and State 
should be separate. On the other hand, the bishops and 
priests hesitated not to use their influence against the 
Republic. Meanwhile, the government removed all clerical 
influence from the national system of education, allowing 
no religious exercises in the public schools and not per- 
mitting clergymen to teach in them. Peculiar conditions 
existed in France. Almost all of the population was 
Roman Catholic, but a great part of the men were held 
lightly by religious ties, and had become accustomed to 
decide matters affecting the country from the point of view 
of politics rather than religion. They now proceeded to 
measures which had never before been brought about in a 
Roman Catholic country except in violent change or up- 
heaval. 

The leaders of the Republic declared, with much truth, 



Church and 
State con- 
nected in 
France 



Clericalism 
and the Re- 
public 



228 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Law of 
Associa- 
tions, 1901 



Separation 
of Church 
and State 



that under existing conditions there could not be national 
unity, since notwithstanding the educational reforms, the 
religious orders, which had in recent years increased enor- 
mously in influence and wealth, did a great deal of 
teaching in their private schools which was directly hostile 
to the government. Accordingly, in 1901, while the con- 
troversy about the Dreyfus Affair was still raging, the 
government passed the so-called Law of Associations, by 
which religious orders would not be allowed to exist unless 
they were authorized by the State. Many of the religious 
orders were not willing to ask the government for per- 
mission to exist, but the law was enforced vigorously, and 
large numbers of monks and nuns were driven out of their 
establishments. In 1904 the government went further, 
passing an act which forbade even the authorized orders 
to do any teaching after 1914. All this was denounced 
by the faithful, who supported the orders, and who be- 
lieved that their liberty was infringed when they were 
deprived of the right to have their children taught by the 
instructors they most preferred. The State, however, 
was now resolved to have a monopoly of the education of 
its children and let hostile teachers do none of it. 

Matters soon went much further. Many Frenchmen, 
moved by intellectual forces more than religious im- 
pulses, regarded Roman Catholicism, along with other 
religions, as something to be cherished by those who wished 
it, but not imposed in any manner by the State or 
supported by government taxes. A great number of 
Frenchmen reasoned thus with much of the tolerant or 
contemptuous feeling for the Catholic faith which Voltaire 
and Diderot had long before them. They were reinforced 
by many others who believed that clericalism was and had 
from the first been strongly hostile to the Republic, and 
that the priests as well as the members of the teaching 
orders aroused opposition to the government, and made 
division and weakness in the nation. They supported a 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



229 



principle, therefore, which had long before been estab- 
lished in the United States, that Church and State should 
be separate, and that while the Church in its religious 
capacity was not to be interfered with by the government, 
it was not any longer to be supported by the government, 
but by voluntary contributions from its members. There- 
fore in 1905 a law was passed which brought to an end the 
Concordat of 1801. By the terms of the law, which now 
separated Church and State, something was to be done for 
aged clergymen and for those who had just become priests, 
but the State was no longer to pay the salaries of church- 
men, nor was it any longer to control their appointments. 
The church buildings, still national property, might be 
used freely by members of the Roman Catholic Church 
or of other sects, provided the members of a congregation 
formed an association cultuelle (association of worship). 

This arrangement seemed proper to many Frenchmen 
who were without strong religious ties. It seemed most 
natural to people, like those in the United States, who had 
long been accustomed to separation of Church and State 
and believed that such separation was not only best for 
the State but of greatest possible good for the Church. 
But it violated much that was deeply rooted in a vener- 
able past and loved and respected by many men and 
most of the women in France. There had been a great 
deal of sympathy for the members of religious orders who 
seemed dispossessed of their property and driven forth 
from their homes. Now there were riotous scenes about 
some of the churches. Not a few Catholics, however, 
believed that the trend of modern conditions made 
separation best for the Church ; and some of the ecclesias- 
tics were willing at least to compromise with the authori- 
ties of the State. But the pope condemned the law, and 
good Catholics had then to oppose it. In 1907 the govern- 
ment passed a further law by which the churches might 
be used free of cost provided the priest or minister made a 



The Chtirch 
to be sup- 
ported by 
its members 



Troubles 
resultant 



230 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



France torn 
by the 
struggle 



National 
wealth 



contract therefor with the local officials. The Republic 
was stirred to its depths during the years which followed, 
and division between two bodies of the population seemed 
greater than ever; but the authorities, supported by 
socialists, progressives, radicals, and others, were firm, 
and in the end seemed to have the support of most of the 
nation. Separation of Church and State was definitely 
accomplished in spite of the opposition raised up against 
it. Nevertheless, it was truly felt that there was now 
between the Roman Catholic Church, which taught the 
faith nominally, at least, of almost all the French people, 
and the government of the Republic, a breach which time 
only could heal. Actually the division continued until 
the beginning of the Great War, when in the fearful danger 
and sufferings of the years after 1914 churchmen rallied 
loyally to the patrie, and many of the people came back 
to the Church more than for a great while before. 

During all the latter part of the nineteenth century 
wealth increased in France, not as in Britain where it was 
based on industrial development and the carrying trade 
of the world, nor in Germany where it came from marvel- 
ous industrial and commercial expansion, nor in the United 
States where the people had as gifts from nature the great- 
est resources man ever fell heir to, but beyond what 
Frenchmen had ever possessed before. And if the total 
amount of this wealth was not so great as in England or the 
United States, and if the standard of living was lower 
than in the English-speaking countries, yet it was ap- 
parently true that nowhere else was there so high an 
average prosperity or such a wide distribution of property 
among so great a number of people. This arose from two 
causes, in which France seemed, whether rightly or 
wrongly, to be in advance of the rest of the world; the land 
was very widely distributed among a large number of pro- 
prietors, and the size of families was small. 

In France one of the most important results of the 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



231 



Revolution was that the lands, previously owned by 
nobles or Church, were taken from their owners and sold 
by the State to the people. In this way a great deal of 
landed property, formerly in possession of a few wealthy 
proprietors — as was the case in Russia until the Revolution 
of 1917, and as was largely the case in Britain until the 
terrible taxation of the war — changed hands, and in course 
of time was sold to numerous peasant farmers. The 
result of this was to create a large body of small owners, 
having the means to achieve greater prosperity and well- 
being than ever before. Some observers who lived then 
believed that this amelioration was only for the time. 
They said that the lands would soon get out of the posses- 
sion of the new owners, or else that they, having more 
children because they could support them, would be no 
better off; and that when the holdings were divided 
among these larger families of the next generation there 
would again be miserable cultivators living upon scanty 
patches of ground. Previous to this time the birth-rate 
in France had been high. Now, Arthur Young, the 
celebrated traveller, predicted that the country would 
become a veritable rabbit-warren, so fast would the popula- 
tion breed. But this did not take place. About the 
middle of the nineteenth century the English economist, 
John Stuart Mill, noticed that the French birth-rate had 
fallen, and that families were much smaller. He ex- 
plained this by saying that the new body of proprietors, 
accustomed to a higher standard of living, refused to 
lower it by having more children than they could prop- 
erly support; that they were also unwilling to lower the 
standard of the next generation by dividing their property 
among so many children that the amount for each would 
be insufficient. 

All through the century this tendency continued with 
ever-greater force. By the time of the Franco-German 
War the population of the country was no longer increasing 



Property 
and birth- 
rate 



Previous 
high birth- 
rate in 
France 



232 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Declining 
birth-rate 
and station- 
ary popula- 
tion 



Birth-rate 
and stand- 
ard of living 



rapidly, and since that time it has scarcely increased at all. 
The results have seemed good and bad. On the one hand, 
there has been, compared with the past and with the pres- 
ent in other European countries, a generally high stand- 
ard of living. For many Frenchmen there has been a 
great amount of leisure and comfort, which has enabled 
them to be the foremost leaders of civilization and thought, 
and to enjoy deeply, in their manner, the civilization of 
their era. On the other hand, the population of France 
has stood still while that of Britain has overtaken it, 
and while that of Germany threatened to become twice 
as large. Hence, there was always the danger that France 
might be overwhelmed by superior numbers. It was, 
perhaps, this growing numerical inferiority more than 
anything else that made it impossible for France, after 
she had recovered from the defeat of 1871, to think of 
undertaking a successful war of revenge. It was in vain 
that the government tried to encourage larger families, 
offering to exempt the father of several children from 
taxation, and even offering prizes to the mothers of large 
families. There were a few large families, but always they 
were the exception. Generally the birth-rate remained 
so low that in the latter part of the nineteenth century 
there was much fear that the population might even be 
declining, and that France was a dying nation, destined 
after a while to disappear. Enemies of France declared 
that this stationary or declining population and small 
birth-rate showed that the French were a decadent people ; 
and that in France in 1900, as in the dying Roman Empire 
long before, there was no longer enough vigor to produce 
the men and women to carry on the destiny of the nation. 
On the other hand, it was insistently declared that what 
was taking place in France was only what had always 
characterized highly civilized people, who had risen to 
better intelligence and standard of living; that it was 
actually manifest among the upper and more intelligent 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



233 



classes in all of the highly developed nations of the world; 
and that the only thing which was peculiar in France was 
that well-being and intelligence were so universally dif- 
fused, that what existed solely among the upper classes 
elsewhere prevailed in France among most of the people. 

The foreign affairs of the nation during this period were 
concerned chiefly with the recovery of France, getting 
allies to stand with her against the combination formed 
by the German Empire, and building up a colonial em- 
pire. The recovery of France was beset with difficulties 
that seemed very disheartening then. Not only did 
she have to pay the indemnity and repair the losses 
caused by her disastrous defeat, but when once the money 
had been paid to Germany and recovery was going well 
forward, she was watched with jealous suspicion by the 
Germans. They, having overthrown and plundered her, 
wished that she might remain weak and without friends 
to assist her, so that she could not possibly take venge- 
ance. At first the French, smarting under their humilia- 
tion and the sense of their wrongs, declared openly that 
they would have revenge as soon as they could. Bismarck 
and his military colleagues had believed that the terms of 
the treaty were such that France would remain weak for 
some time; but when the indemnity was paid off sooner 
than had been considered possible, and the French people 
went forward in marvellously swift recuperation, Germany 
looked on with growing uneasiness and suspicion. It 
was not that Germans doubted that they could defeat 
France again ; but some of the leaders taught the doctrine 
that if another war must be fought, it would be easier 
and wiser to strike the enemy down before he recov- 
ered full strength. 

In this manner arose the once famous Affair of 1875. 
France had adopted the Prussian system of universal 
military training, and in that year passed a law to com- 
plete the reorganization of her army. What followed is 



Foreign 
relations 



The Affair 
of 1875 



234 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Alleged Ger- 
man plan 
to strike 
France 



The Schnae- 
bele Affair 



still enveloped in some obscurity; but it would seem 
that German leaders believed it would be well to strike 
before the new law could produce its effects, and that 
Bismarck desired to impose a new treaty by which France 
would not be permitted to maintain a large army. How- 
ever this be, it is certain that there was a great war scare, 
and that the French feared they would be attacked. If 
such was the German intention, it speedily brought from 
Russia and from Great Britain intimation that they would 
not this time stand aside and see France first attacked and 
then crushed; and soon the crisis was over. The result was 
that France now passed definitely out of the position of 
hopeless inferiority in which she had been left in 1871, and 
gained steadily in strength and assurance. 

But however swift and splendid her recovery was, it 
came too late to enable her to settle her account with the 
Germans. As the years passed France grew stronger and 
greater than before, but meanwhile Germany was growing 
much more rapidly still in population, wealth, and 
military power. It would have been madness for France 
to begin war upon Germany single-handed, and mean- 
while she had no allies. The German Empire was the 
center and head of the greatest military alliance in the 
world, and all through Bismarck's time France remained 
in isolation. But as time went on Russia drew away from 
Germany; and it seemed to Frenchmen that their chance 
might some day come if Germany were involved in war 
with Russia, or if Russia formed an alliance with France. 
In 1887 relations between the two countries were strained 
as a result of the Boulanger Affair, and also because of 
the arrest by the German Government of M. Schnsebele, 
a French official, near the frontier. During the crisis 
Russia moved troops toward the German border, showing 
clearly her attitude toward Germany and France. Bis- 
marck speaking in the Reichstag had said that if France 
again attacked Germany "we should endeavor to make 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



235 



France incapable of attacking us for thirty years . . . 
each would seek to bleed the other white." But Schnse- 
bele was released, and Boulanger's efforts came to nothing. 
With the passing of Bismarck and the beginning of a 
new policy by William II, a great change came swiftly to 
pass; Russia and France drew together in the Dual Alli- 
ance. There had been obstacles enough in the way with- 
out the skilful manipulation of Bismarck. Napoleon I 
had invaded Russia and brought about the burning of 
Moscow, and Napoleon III had been the leader of the 
combination which crushed Russia in the Crimean War. 
On the other hand. Frenchmen remembered the terrible 
retreat of the Grand Army in 1812, and they had recently 
seen Russia stand as the friend of Prussia while Prussia 
was humbling France in the dust. Moreover, Frenchmen 
had been the leaders in political reform in Europe, and 
now constituted the largest body of self-governing freemen 
on the Continent; while in Russia it seemed that selfish 
and reactionary autocrats held the people in lowly con- 
dition. But the mere fact that Russia and France were 
separated and some distance apart served to remove evil 
memories and causes of friction. Now they were both 
isolated as a result of German statecraft, France in the 
west, Russia in the east. They both needed allies. France 
felt insecure without the support of some powerful friend, 
as did Russia who, moreover, badly needed money for 
internal development, which could be obtained now in 
France better than anywhere else. These causes operated 
swiftly, once the influence of Bismarck was removed. 
Even before his fall the Russian Government, which had 
previously borrowed in Germany, began placing huge 
loans in France. Apparently also she desired to have 
France as a helper. Negotiations and friendly visits began 
in 1890. Then in 1892 the two powers entered into an 
entente or friendly understanding, and in the next year 
a military convention was signed. It was believed then 



The Dual 
Alliance : 
Russia and 
France 



Russia and 
France need 
each other 



236 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Effect of the 
Dual Alli- 
ance 



Rivalry of 
France and 
Great 
Britain 



and for a long time afterward that a treaty of alliance had 
been made, but in 1918 the publication of a French Yellow 
Book made it plain that no treaty of alliance had been 
signed, and that what had long popularly been designated 
as the Dual Alliance rested upon the entente and the Mili- 
tary Convention of 1892-3. The agreement stipulated 
that in case one of the parties to the treaty were attacked 
by Germany, the other would stand by its partner with all 
its power. Wlien in 1914 Germany was about to declare 
war upon Russia, she demanded to know what France 
would then do, and the French Government not satisfying 
her, she declared war also upon France. 

The result of the Dual Alliance of 1893 was in some 
sense to restore the balance of power in Europe, to take 
France out of her position of loneliness and inferiority, 
and to shake the hegemony of the German Empire. But 
actually it did little beyond making France feel more se- 
cure. The Triple Alliance was believed by competent ob- 
servers to be stronger than its rival; and France and 
Russia were, moreover, in active rivalry with Great Brit- 
ain. Therefore, after 1893, as before, France found that 
it was hopeless to think of attacking Germany to get back 
the lost provinces and restore her position; and in course 
of time desire and expectation of doing this so far died 
out that they cannot be reckoned as important causes of 
the War of 1914-18. 

In the course of the generation after the Franco-German 
War France came into dangerous and increasing rivalry 
with Great Britain. This resulted from colonial expan- 
sion and the naval expansion which went with it. When 
once her recovery was well begun, France again turned 
her eyes beyond Europe with the purpose of building up a 
larger colonial empire and retrieving abroad her losses. 
She had great success in north Africa, in southeastern 
Asia, and in some of the islands, especially Madagascar; 
and it was no long time before she had built up the second 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 



237 



colonial empire in the world. Along with this went naval 
expansion, which awakened the ever- watchful jealousy of 
Britain. Especially was this so after the formation of the 
Dual Alliance, for England was apprehensive of Russian 
expansion in Asia down toward India, just as she was of 
French naval increase and French expansion in northern 
Africa toward the Nile. Great tension and much hostility 
developed year by year, and in the latter part of the cen- 
tury the situation seemed fraught with the ominous 
possibilities of conflict which a decade later made the rela- 
tions between Germany and England so dangerous. The 
crisis came in 1898, when British forces, which had moved 
up from Egypt and just conquered the Sudan, came in 
contact with French forces which had moved eastward 
across Africa to Fashoda on the upper Nile and there 
hoisted the French flag. England demanded that France 
withdraw, and this was at first refused. But it was as 
hopeless for France to contend with the overwhelming 
sea power of Britain as it was for her to contest with 
Germany on the Rhine, and so she yielded completely. 
The episode left great bitterness in the hearts of French- 
men. At this time some of them believed that they had 
best forget the past and join with Germany against Eng- 
land, their traditional foe. Until this time, however, 
Germany had seemed drawing closer and closer to Eng- 
land. But in reality a turning-point had been reached. 
Germany and England were just about to begin drawing 
apart in bitterest rivalry, which was one day to lead to 
war; while after a few years England and France were to 
enter into a friendship which would be the salvation of 
them both later on. 



Competition 
in colonial 
expansion 



France 
yields to 
Great 
Britain 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



General accounts: Gabriel Hanotaux, Histoire de la France 
Contemporaine, 4 vols. (1903-5), trans, by J. C. Tarver, Con- 
temporary France, 4 vols. (1903-9), best, covers the period 1870- 



238 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

1882; the most recent work of importance is Emile Bourgeois, 
whose work, done for the Cambridge Historical Series was trans- 
lated into EngUsh, Modern France, 2 vols. (1919); J. C. Bracq, 
France Under the Republic (1910) ; Samuel Denis, Histoire Con- 
temporaine, 4 vols. (1897-1903), from the fall of the Empire 
to the work of the National Assembly ; F. Despagnet, La Diplo- 
maiie de la Troisieme RSpublique et le Droit des Gens (1904); 
Frederick Lawton, The Third, Republic (1909); Emile Simond, 
Histoire de la Troisieme RSpublique de 1887 a 189^ (1913) ; Edgar 
Zevort, Histoire de la Troisieme RSpublique, 4 vols. (2d ed. 1898- 
1901), covers the period 1870-94. 

The Commune : Maxime Du Camp, Les Convulsions de Paris, 
4i vols. (5th ed. 1881), conservative; Edmond Lepelletier, His- 
toire de la Commune de 1871, 2 vols. (1911-12), best; P. O. 
Lissagaray, English trans, by E. M. Aveling, History of the 
Commune of 1871 (2d ed. 1898), by an ardent sympathizer; 
E. B. Washburne, Franco-German War and Insurrection of the 
Commune (1878). 

The beginning of the restoration of France: Paul Deschanel, 
Gambetta (1919); Jules Simon, Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers, 
8 FSvrier 1871-24 Mai 1873, 2 vols. (1879), trans., 2 vols. (1879) ; 
L. A. Thiers, Notes et Souvenirs de M. Thiers, 1870-1873 (1903), 
trans, by F. M. Atkinson, Memoirs of M. Thiers, 1870-1873 
(1915); Edgar Zevort, Thiers (1892); J. Valfrey, Histoire de la 
Diplomatic du Gouvernement de la DSfense Nationale, 3 vols. 
(1871-3), Histoire du Traite de Francfort et de la Liberation du 
Territoire, 2 vols. (1874-5), the latter contains valuable mater- 
ials not elsewhere published. 

Government and customs: Raymond Poincare, trans, by B. 
Miall, How France Is Governed (1914), excellent brief treatise; 
Barrett Wendell, The France of To-day, (1907). 

Political parties: Leon Jacques, Les Parties Politiques sous 
la Troisieme RSpublique (1913). 

Church and state: Aristide Briand, La SSparation des ^glises 
et de r^tat (1905); E. Lecannet, L'Eglise de France sous la Trois- 
ieme RSpublique, 2 vols. (1907-10), Catholic, covers the period to 
1894; Paul Sabatier, A propos de la SSparation des Eglises et de 
Vl^tat (4th ed. 1906), trans. Disestablishment in France (1906). 

The Dreyfus Affair: Joseph Reinach, Histoire de V Affaire 
Dreyfus, 7 vols. (1898-1911), best, sympathetic. 

Foreign politics: H. G de Blowitz, Memoirs (1903); R. de 
Caix, Fashoda (1899); G. Hanotaux, Fachoda (1909); R. Pinon, 



THE DUAL ALLIANCE 239 

L' Empire de la MSditerranSe (1904), France et Allemagne, 1870- 
1913(1913). 

The Dual Alliance: the all-important source is Documents 
Diplomatiques, V Alliance Franco-Russe, published by the French 
Government (1918); E. de Cyon, Histoire de VEntenie Franco- 
Russe, 1886-189Jf (3d ed. 1895), to be used with caution; E. 
Daudet, Souvenirs et RivSlations, Histoire Diplomatique de 
r Alliance Franco-Russe, 1873-1893 (3d ed. 1893), to be used 
cautiously; C. de S. de Freycinet, Souvenirs, 1878-93 (1913), 
valuable, by one of the principal participants; V. de Gorloff, 
Origines et Bases de V Alliance Franco-Russe (1913) ; J. J. Hansen, 
U Alliance Franco-Russe (1897), by a participant; A. Tardieu, 
La France et les Alliances (1904), English trans. France and the 
Alliances (1908), excellent. 



CHAPTER X 
DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself 
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; 

. methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and 
kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam. . . . 
Milton, Areopagitica (1644). 

There is no country so interested in the maintenance of peace as 
England. . . . She is not an aggressive power, for there is 
nothing that she desires. . . . What she wishes is to maintain 
and to enjoy the unexampled Empire which she has built up, and 
which it is her pride to remember exists as much upon sympathy 
as upon force. 

Speech of the Earl of Beaconsfield at the Lord Mayor's 
Banquet, London Times, November 10, 187G. 

Britische Herrschsucht und Handelseifersucht sind die Triebfedern 
gewesen, welche die Welt organisiert und in Bewegung gesetzt 
haben, um den Vernichtungskrieg gegen ein friedliebendes Volk 
zu fiihren; 

Graf Ernst Reventlow, Deutschlands Ausiodrtige Politik, 1888- 
19U (ed. 1918), p. 477. 

Great Brit- The history of Great Britain in the later period has to 

ain in the do largely with the growth of the British Empire, with 

past genera- gj-^at and increasing dangers which threatened, and after- 
ward with a mighty triumph. In most respects it is a 
record of prosperity and power. But more important, 
perhaps, it is also a story of increasing control of the 
government by the people, until at last the British have 
become one of the most democratic nations in the world. 
This very progress has brought them serious problems, 
perplexing and not yet settled. 

By the Electoral Reform Law of 1867 only a part of the 
lower class was allowed to vote, but seventeen years later 

240 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



241 



the franchise was extended also to the agricultural workers 
and the laborers in the mines. By this Reform Law of 
1884, 2,000,000 men were added to the electorate so that 
5,000,000 persons had the franchise, or one person out of 
every seven of the population. Manhood suffrage was 
not yet established, as it had been in France and in the 
German Empire, though actually almost every man was 
now allowed to vote, and the representatives elected by 
them to the House of Commons held the principal powers 
of the government and directly controlled the executive 
organ of the State. Meanwhile, the year before, a Corrupt 
Practices Act limited the amount of money a candi- 
date might spend for election expenses, and provided 
such severe penalties for bribery and corruption as to 
bring them virtually to an end in Great Britain. The 
year after the Electoral Reform Law, the Redistribution 
Act of 1885 practically divided Great Britain into electoral 
districts, bringing representation into accord with popula- 
tion. Previously representation had been by counties 
and by boroughs. Now the small boroughs were merged 
into their counties, most of the larger ones were made 
one-member constituencies, the counties were divided into 
one-member constituencies on the basis of the population 
within them, and the larger cities were given representa- 
tion in accordance with the number of inhabitants in them. 
Thus practically was brought to pass parliamentary repre- 
sentation of people, instead of districts or corporations, 
something that had been proposed in Cromwell's time 
but soon discarded. 

This wide extension of the electorate in England was 
accompanied, as it was in the United States, by persistent 
demand for the extension of democracy upon a broader 
basis by admitting not only more men to a share in the 
government but also the women of the nation. The 
women's movement in Great Britain, as in the United 
States, went on for a considerable time before it got much 



The Rep- 
resenta- 
tion of the 
People Act, 
1884 



The 

women's 
movement 



242 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



In earlier 
times 



The work of 
the Quakers 



Women 
more nu- 
merous than 
men in 
England 



attention, and when at last it was noticed, it was older 
than most people suspected. During the period of the 
Puritan Revolution, and also more than a hundred years 
later in France during the French Revolution, women 
demanded their "rights" as equals with men, and asked 
to share in the governing of the State. Nevertheless, 
the feminist movement is essentially a thing of the 
nineteenth century. It was only the effects of the 
French Revolution, and more particularly of the Industrial 
Revolution, that made it possible for most women to 
escape from the inferior position in which they had always 
previously been held. When in 1792 Mary Godwin 
declared that "women ought to have representatives 
instead of being arbitrarily governed," she was regarded as 
a foolish radical. It is true that in New Jersey, one of 
the American states, in the period 1797-1807, women 
were actually permitted to vote, but this was an isolated 
case, and in both of the great English-speaking countries 
during the first half of the nineteenth century the advocates 
of women's suffrage, principally Quakers, were consid- 
ered to be urging something impracticable and immoral, 
something contrary to the laws of God. But in England 
especially, where the Industrial Revolution first made such 
great headway, conditions changed profoundly, and, with 
them, the position of women, so that it was no longer pos- 
sible to apply the old arguments with such effect as before. 
Formerly woman's place had been the home, and it was 
supposed that almost all would marry, but now a great 
number worked for wages in factories outside the supervis- 
ion of their men at the same time that more and more men 
emigrated to the colonies of the Empire. By the middle 
of the nineteenth century there were 365,000 more women 
than men in England, and over 1,000,000 more in 1900. 
It was obviously impossible for a large number of Eng- 
lish women to marry, and it was evident that many were 
supporting themselves. In many cases they were paying 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



243 



taxes, but they had no voice in the government, no con- 
trol over those who made laws affecting them; they were 
subject to taxation without representation. At the same 
time women were steadily having their minds broadened 
by more education than women had ever had before, and 
they were developing a greater sense of responsibility, 
stronger feeling of individuality, and greater sense of 
their dignity and power. It seemed to them that the 
doctrines established by their forefathers, and proclaimed 
so grandly during the French Revolution, that all men 
were equal and that government depended on the consent 
of the governed, that these doctrines applied to women as 
well as to men. 

Both in England and the United States feminist re- 
formers got some ridicule but not much attention. Most 
of the women, conservative and timid, had no interest in 
the movement, and most men were opposed to it because 
it ran counter to a vast mass of old custom and established 
ideas. But in 1866 John Stuart Mill moved in the House 
of Commons to include women in the provisions of the 
bill then pending to extend the franchise. He declared 
that women's interests were closely connected with men's, 
and that unless men helped them to rise, they would pull 
men down to a lower condition. His proposal was easily 
defeated, but thereafter almost every year a bill was pro- 
posed to allow women to vote. 

To advocates the progress of the movement often seemed 
slow, but actually it was far more rapid than any previous 
movement to extend the suffrage to men. It was not al- 
ways remembered that until the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century the franchise, if held at all, was confined 
almost entirely to a few men of the upper classes. Act- 
ually after a while women in England were allowed to vote 
and be voted for in local elections, and it was generally 
believed that they had a higher position than the women 
of any other country except, probably, the United States. 



Changes 
affecting 
women 



The 

women's 
suffrage 
movement 



Progress of 
the move- 
ment 




10. THE BRITISH ISLES 

244 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 245 

One by one the old legal inequalities were abolished, until 
scarcely any remained, and women's economic oppor- 
tunities became constantly better. Nevertheless, they 
were still subject to some discriminations, and an ever- 
increasing number of them, who desired complete equality 
with men, believed that this could never be attained, 
and that women would never be able to take their proper 
share of the duties of the commonwealth until they were 
admitted to vote for members of parliament upon the 
same conditions as men. 

The movement continued to make slow but certain The 
progress, though the majority of the people, both men and suffragettes 
women, continued to be against it. Finally, about 1905, 
a small number of more radical women, under the leader- 
ship of Mrs. Emmeline Pankliurst, tiring at impediments 
and delay, lack of public interest and attention, under- 
took to procure votes for women by force and compulsion, 
which, they said, had been the method that men had 
employed. Then for a few years was carried on a cam- 
paign ridiculous and alarming. "Wild women," as they 
were called, screamed and interrupted public meetings, 
harassed public officials, interfered with the carrying 
on of the government in which they had no part, and 
perpetrated all sorts of petty violence and outrage. When 
arrested and imprisoned they tried the "hunger strike," 
which had previously been employed by political prisoners 
in Russia, starving themselves, so that the government, 
which desired that no woman should be killed in this 
contest, invariably released them. By 1914 these suffra- 
gettes had become so great a menace and nuisance that 
some foreigners believed Englishmen to be decadent and 
not capable of dealing with troublesome questions. The 
suffragettes did attract a great deal of attention for their 
cause, but they also aroused much hostility and strong 
dislike. They had set the dangerous precedent of women 
employing force, when the whole tendency of civilization 



246 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Extension 
of the 
franchise, 
1918 



Changes in 
representa- 
tion sug- 
gested 



had been for force not to be employed against women. 
Moreover, they afforded one of the first conspicuous 
examples of a procedure — since not uncommon — of an or- 
ganized minority boldly making itself intolerable so as to 
compel the yielding of the things which it wanted. But 
when the war began in 1914 they immediately ceased 
their campaign, and rallied to the support of the country. 
During the contest the women of Great Britain performed 
indispensable and tremendous service, and it was generally 
recognized that the suffrage should be given to them if they 
desired it. 

The great expansion of democratic feeling in Enghsh- 
speaking countries during the war now led to a further 
extension of the suffrage to men, and at the same time 
many women were also admitted. In 1918 all men over 
twenty-one, with fixed residence or business premises for 
six months, and all women already entitled to vote in 
local elections and women whose husbands were so en- 
titled, were given the parliamentary franchise. The 
electorate was thus increased by 2,000,000 men and 
6,000,000 women, so that now one out of every three of 
the entire population could vote, thus extending the 
suffrage to a larger portion of the population than had 
been done in any great country before. The government 
of the United Kingdom had been put into the hands of its 
people about as far as was possible under the existing 
system; and the people had more complete control and 
were able to make their wishes felt more immediately and 
directly than in any other great nation in the world. It 
was said now by some that further reform must lie, not so 
much in the direction of extending the suffrage as in so 
changing the system that industries and groups, rather 
than districts, should be represented. Thus, it was be- 
lieved, the people might, perhaps, get more complete 
economic control as well as control of political matters. 
But opponents protested that such an arrangement would 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



247 



merely be a reversion to a more primitive and less good 
system, tried and discarded in the past. 

During the period 1867-1918 all sorts of reforms were 
carried forward for the purpose of making the body of the 
people able to share in their government and also for the 
bettering of their condition. In 1867 Robert Lowe had 
said: "We must now educate our masters." This was 
undertaken by the Liberals who came into power under 
Gladstone almost immediately after Disraeli had carried 
the second Electoral Reform Law. A great change was 
made in 1870. Down to this time English education, except 
for a very few of the wealthy, was far behind what existed 
in Germany or the United States. There were the two 
old universities of Oxford and Cambridge, unrivalled in 
beauty and ancient charm, but giving only the culture 
which befitted the children of the ruling classes. Beneath 
them were certain "public schools" Hke Eton and Rugby, 
where also sons of the aristocrats might receive splendid 
teaching of the humanities and fine training in the develop- 
ment of character. But this was by far the best part of 
a system which had been devised principally for the upper 
classes. In 1870 there were thought to be about 4,000,000 
children of school age, of whom only half attended any 
school. Of these 2,000,000, half attended schools poorly 
organized and often not well conducted. The rest went 
to schools under government inspection and partly sup- 
ported by the government but managed by the Church 
of England, so that in England, as in France and in Spain, 
a considerable part of the education remained in the hands 
of the Church. Several small reforms had already been 
made, but it was evident that a great deal was yet to be 
done. There was much difference of opinion, as there 
was in similar instances in most European countries. 
Some believed that it was well for religious teaching to be 
given; others that education ought to be entirely without 
religious influence, and compulsory and free. The Edu- 



Improve- 
ment of 
education 



Education of 
the children 
in 1870 



248 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Reform : the 
Education 
Act of 1870 



Social and 

economic 

reforms 



cation Act of 1870 was a compromise, as has usually been 
the case in England. Existing voluntary schools doing 
good work were to be retained and get more assistance from 
the government, and they might continue their religious 
instruction. Elsewhere "board schools" were to be 
established, supported by the government, by the local 
rates, and partly by fees paid by the parents of the children 
attending. In them no religious denominational instruc- 
tion was to be allowed. This reform by no means brought 
the educational system of Great Britain up to the stand- 
ards of Switzerland and the German Empire; it did not 
make education entirely free and compulsory, and it left 
it partly under denominational control. None the less, 
it greatly bettered conditions and to a considerable extent 
provided education free of cost to the children. Before 
the end of the century four fifths of the children went to 
school. The work was carried far forward in 1918 by one 
of the great reforms of the period of the war, when a law 
was passed providing that all children between five and 
fourteen years must go to school, and providing that the 
expense of education should be divided equally between 
the central government and the local authorities. 

The admission of the lower classes to the electorate 
and to a share in the government in 1867 and 1884 was 
not followed by an overturning of the government, such 
as people in the upper classes had feared, nor by any ex- 
ceedingly radical demands. Nevertheless, as in the earlier 
part of the century, a whole series of reforms was gradually 
carried out, the two parties vying with each other in mak- 
ing the changes. The Liberals believed that they ought 
to be made; the Conservatives considered them inevitable 
and believed it better for the government to grant them 
than for the mass of the people to compel them. Some 
of the changes had to do with taking away privileges from 
particular classes. In 1870 the civil service was reformed. 
Next year the University Tests Act practically completed 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



249 



the removal of the religious tests, which before had re- 
stricted the privileges of the great universities mostly to 
members of the Church of England. Another group had 
to do with bettering economic conditions and protecting 
labor. In the period 1878-1901 factory legislation was 
extended and simplified; and during the same time laws 
were passed to regulate better the conditions in the mines. 
The state socialism of Bismarck had put the German Em- 
pire ahead of other countries for a while in the improve- 
ment of social and economic conditions, but similar work 
was undertaken also in the United Kingdom when the 
Liberal Party came into power under Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman, Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Lloyd George in 1905. 
In the course of the years immediately following a Work- 
ingmen's Compensation Act (1906) made employers liable 
to pay compensation to employees injured by accident. 
An Old Age Pension Act (1909) provided that every per- 
son over seventy years of age with an income of less than 
£31 10s. should receive a pension from the State. Long 
effort had been needed to secure this law, since while its 
advocates asserted that it would make happier the last 
years of deserving unfortunates, opponents declared that 
all such legislation was ruinous since it tended to paup- 
erize people, encouraging them to rely on assistance from 
the State rather than on their own efforts. In 1911 was 
passed a National Insurance Act which provided insurance 
for sickness and loss of employment, the funds to be sub- 
scribed generally, though not always, by the employees, 
and by the employers and the State. 

Beginning with 1824 a series of statutes, especially the 
statute of 1871, gradually legalized the trade unions, 
which workingmen had already formed for protection and 
advancement of their interests, and in order to raise their 
wages, but which the State long continued to oppose. In 
1901, it is true, the House of Lords declared, in the Taff 
Vale Case, that members of trade unions were liable 



Regulation 
of industry 
and labor 



Trade 
unions 



250 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

The Taff singly and collectively for the acts of their union. This 

Vale Case ^^^ merely corporate responsibility added to the corporate 
privileges which unions had already acquired; but it was 
felt by many that workingmen's unions were so much 
weaker than the powerful employers, and so much more in 
need of assistance, that they needed special protection. 
Therefore in 1906 the Trades Disputes Act gave immunity 
to trade-union funds. Actually, however, trade unions 
were becoming exceedingly powerful in Great Britain. 
More and more they were able to deal as equals or superiors 
with the employers, and cause the government itself to heed 
their wishes. Memories of long oppression and tyranny 
on the part of capitalists and employers made many 
leaders of the workingmen regard all employers with dis- 
like and suspicion; and gradually they adopted socialist 
ideas and began to hope that a day might come when 
capitalism and middle-class employers would be done 
away with completely. Numerous strikes were called, it 
sometimes seemed, more for the purpose of harassing the 
employers than anything else. Particularly did the doc- 
trine spread among British workingmen that they were 
made to work too many hours for the benefit of employers, 
that thus numerous people could find no work to do, and 
that only if hours were reduced and production restrained 
would there be work enough for them all. 
The Labor As Britain became a completely industriahzed country 

Party w\\h. its artisans composing so great a portion of the 

people, leaders aspired to found a Labor Party, to 
take control of the government some day for organized 
labor, which would then be able to reconstruct the State. 
In 1893 an Independent Labor Party was founded, which 
proposed to have the government bring about an eight- 
hour day of labor, collective ownership, and State control 
of railways, shipping, and banks. Most of the British 
laborers were not yet ready to accept socialistic doctrines, 
and they did not give this party their support. In 1906 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



251 



another Labor Party was formed. It became one of the 
smaller groups in the House of Commons, with power 
increasing as time went on, and its advocates expecting 
it to be the dominant party in the future. 

Labor disputes became constantly more bitter and 
labor leaders more aggressive in the years just before the 
war. The wiser of the leaders desired nothing more than 
the real improvement of laboring people; but it was often 
believed that the numerous harassing strikes and refusal to 
work more than a certain amount were seriously hindering 
production and putting Britain behind in industrial com- 
petition with Germany and the United States. During 
the Great War British labor gave splendid response to the 
needs of the country, the unions consenting to put aside 
the rules which they had made for their protection. But 
it was very evident that they expected their reward to 
come after their country had triumphed. Some of them 
declared that then the State must take over the mines and 
the railways and other great instruments and sources of 
production to be used for the people themselves, and that 
much must be done by the government to give the work- 
ers a larger share in the goods of the State. In 1917 the 
British Labor Committee issued a Report in which it de- 
clared that there must be democratic control of all the 
machinery of the State, and that the system of private 
capitalists must yield to common ownership of land and 
capital by the people. At the end of the struggle the pow- 
erful "Triple Alhance" of miners, transport workers, and 
railwaymen was strengthened, and the organized laborers 
of the country drew up in powerful array threatening to 
enforce their wishes by "direct action" of paralyzing 
strikes. By this time it seemed that the trade unions in 
Great Britain, as in some other countries, were no longer 
struggling so much for the protection of themselves as to 
enforce the special interests of their particular class. 

Social betterment in the United Kingdom had lagged 



Labor 
powerful 
and aggres- 
sive 



Report of 
the British 
Labor Com- 
mittee 



252 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Wealth and 
poverty in 
Great 
Britain 



The land 
owned by 
a few 
aristocrats 



far behind the wishes of enhghtened leaders hke Mr. 
Lloyd George, and the desires of the socialist and radical 
teachers. The condition of a great part of the people 
seemed far less good than that of the Germans, protected 
by their vigorous and paternal government, or of the in- 
habitants of the United States and some of the British 
dominions, where new lands were being opened up and 
great natural resources made use of. The evils of in- 
dustrialism had by no means yet disappeared. For its 
size Britain was the wealthiest country in the world, but 
tliis wealth was largely concentrated in the hands of a few. 
It was estimated that half of the national income went to 
12 per cent, of the population, that all the rest of the peo- 
ple were poor, and that in some communities a third of 
them were always on the verge of starvation. Before 
1914 travellers were struck by the appalling misery of the 
slums of Glasgow and the dreadful poverty of wide areas 
about the Whitechapel district in London. To some 
extent it was against such conditions that the British 
trade unions were strugghng; and their ignorant, ob- 
stinate, and arbitrary methods were often to be explained 
and excused because of the long-standing and terrible evils 
which they confronted. 

Most of the land had long since come into the possession 
of a few great owners. In England two thirds of the soil 
was owned by 10,000 persons, and almost all of Scotland 
by 1,700 persons; many of the large estates being en- 
tailed, so that they could not easily be alienated or divided, 
and so that usually they passed intact from one generation 
to another. To a considerable extent Britain was a 
country of beautiful parks and estates, with picturesque 
old villages, delightful to the tourist's eye, though often 
antiquated, unsanitary, and not sufficient for the needs 
of the rural population. The agricultural laborers were 
crowded off the land, or else entirely at the mercy of 
powerful landowners. At the other extreme were the 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



253 



great landed proprietors, with large fortunes and exten- 
sive investments, taxed lightly on their lands, wealthy, 
powerful, constituting — far more than in France and as 
much as in Germany — an aristocratic caste above the 
other inhabitants. They completely dominated fashion- 
able and social life; they filled many of the important 
places in the government; and some of them composed 
the House of Lords. Generally they had been wise and 
careful, and had contributed not a little to the welfare 
of the country; and it was partly for these reasons that 
they had been able to retain so much of their position 
and their power. But many Englishmen had long thought 
it a misfortune that their agriculture should so far decline 
and their rural population diminish; and there had long 
been agitation, which increased during the war, for the 
government in some way to compel the breaking up of 
the great estates and to settle part of the population upon 
them. 

It was partly the cost of the social legislation, which was 
sought and which was being carried through, that led to 
one of the greatest revolutions in British government for 
generations. This was the virtual taking away of the 
power of the House of Lords by the Parliament Act of 
1911. More money was needed by the government, 
and Mr. Lloyd George, chancellor of the exchequer, now 
proposed to increase the budget partly by increased in- 
come taxes and also by heavy taxation on the unearned 
increment of land values, that is, where the value of un- 
occupied or unimproved land was increased not through 
anything done by the owner but by the mere increase 
in population or surrounding values. Thus, he proposed 
to get the larger amounts of money needed by higher 
taxes on the possessions of the wealthy; but his scheme was 
denounced as striking at the very security of property; 
and when the provision passed the House of Commons at 
the end of 1909 it was at once rejected by the Lords. 



The nobility 
in Britain 



The House 
of Lords 
and the 
budget 



254 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The House 
of Lords 
and the 
House of 
Commons 



Creation of 
new peers 



When parliament was now dissolved and a new election 
held the issue before the country was the "veto power" of 
the Upper House. Parliament in the beginning had been 
an assembly of estates, as the States General continued 
to be in France, which after a while developed into a body 
of two houses. Its principal functions were advisory 
and judicial, and it long continued to be known as the 
" High Court of Parliament." In course of time, however, 
the principal business of parliament came to be the 
passing of legislation and the appropriation of money. 
In the passing of bills it was necessary that both 
houses give their consent, nor could a bill become law if 
either the Lords or the Commons refused. During the 
eighteenth century the principle was equally well estab- 
lished that bills for the appropriation of money were to 
originate in the Commons and not to be altered by the 
Lords. In other respects, however, the House of Lords 
continued to have the veto power and used it not infre- 
quently. On several important occasions there had been 
bitter disputes between the two Houses, and in two mem- 
orable instances the government had employed a particular 
device to overcome the opposition of the Lords. In 
1711 the government wished to have the approval of par- 
liament for the Treaty of Utrecht which had just been 
negotiated. It was easy to get such approval from the 
Commons, but there was a majority opposing in the 
Lords. Thereupon Queen Anne announced the creation 
of twelve new peers, whose coming into the House of Lords 
made a majority favorable to the measure, which was then 
approved. Similarly in 1830 and 1831 the Lords vetoed 
the bill for electoral reform, which the Commons had 
passed, and which a majority of the people wanted. There 
was no ordinary way by which this opposition could be 
removed, since the Lords held their seats by hereditary 
title, but again the government made ready to create a 
large number of Whig peers who would ensure the passage 



ment Law of 
1911 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 255 

of the bill. Under this threat the Lords yielded, and the 
Reform Bill of 1832 became law. Now in 1910, after the 
Lords had rejected the Finance Bill, parliament was dis- 
solved and elections held on the issue of abolishing the veto 
power of the Lords. The Liberals won and brought for- 
ward such a bill, which the Lords rejected. Again parlia- 
ment was dissolved and the issue bitterly contested in 
general elections, and again the Liberals triumphed. 
Early in 1911 it was announced that a sufficient number 
of new peers would be created to carry the bill. Then 
the House of Lords yielded and the bill was enacted into 
law. 

This Parhament Law of 1911 provided that the Lords The Parlia 
should have no power whatever to reject any money bill, 
and that any other measure passing the Commons in three 
successive sessions within a period of not less than two 
years should become law despite the Lords' veto. Thus 
the constitution of parliament was fundamentally altered. 
For a long time the Lords had been more powerful and 
important than the Commons, but since the eighteenth 
century the Commons had been getting an ascendancy 
greater and greater. None the less, the Lords might still 
oppose and successfully obstruct. Now substantially 
this power was taken away from them, and only that 
part of parliament which was elected by the people re- 
mained with great influence in the State. According 
to the law the king still possessed the right to veto a bill; 
but no sovereign had done this since 1707, and actually 
this prerogative had been completely lost. It should be The Peerage 
said that in 1719 a bill had nearly passed parliament by Bill of 1719 
which the government would have lost the right to create 
new peers. Had this taken place, neither the Reform Law 
of 1832 nor the Parliament Act of 1911 could have been 
enacted without a revolution, since it was only upon the 
threat of creating new peers that the House of Lords had 
yielded and surrendered its power. It is probable that 



^56 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Irish 
Question 



Conquest 
of Ireland 
by the 
English 



the Upper House of the English parhament will presently 
be reconstituted on a more modern basis. At present its 
power is far less than that of the American Senate, which, 
since 1913, has been made directly dependent on the 
people. In 1911, also, by this same law, the maximum 
duration of a parliament was fixed at five years, instead 
of seven years, as previously since 1716. In the same 
year also the Commons voted to pay their members, 
something once done, but not done for a long while. 

The struggle over the power of the House of Lords was 
intimately connected with the long contest for Irish Home 
Rule; and when the veto was taken from the Lords it 
seemed for the moment that the Irish Question was 
nearer settlement than it had ever been in the past. In 
the midst of the great success that had come to England 
and the British Empire in the nineteenth century Ireland 
was the principal failure. Its story was an old story of 
tragedy and misfortune and woe. The errors of times past 
had been so great, and the enmities which had resulted were 
so lasting, that the settlement of the Irish Question had 
baffled generations of statesmen and was now one of the 
most difficult of all the problems for which Britain must 
find a solution. 

Ireland in the early ages was inhabited by Celtic people 
much hke those in Britain. As a result of the Anglo-Saxon 
conquest the Brythonic Celts disappeared from most of 
what then became England, but across in Erin, the other 
island, the Goidelic Celts kept possession of the country 
and developed in some places considerable culture. Like 
the Anglo-Saxons in England, the Celts in Ireland failed 
to develop a nation and remained di\aded in tribes or 
small kingdoms; and they continued thus disunited long 
after the conquest of England by the Normans had made 
the EngHsh a nation and given to England a strong central 
government. Thus they fell an easy prey to invaders, 
first the Danes, then Norman adventurers from England, 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



257 



and finally the English Government itself; but for a long 
time they were never completely conquered. The in- 
vaders held the east coast and the natives held the rest of 
the country. The Celts could not drive the intruders 
out; the invaders could not make a complete conquest, 
but were able to prevent the better development of Irish 
civilization and the establishment of an Irish nation. In 
the sixteenth century, at a time when Englishmen were 
becoming Protestants and Irishmen were clinging to the 
old Catholic faith, the English began a systematic reduc- 
tion of the country, and in the course of long and terribly 
destructive wars, during which a great many of the Irish 
perished by starvation and the sword, the country was 
completely conquered and reduced to a state of subjection. 

By the end of the seventeenth century this process was 
complete. Ireland was now treated as a conquest of the 
British crown, much as a dependent colony. Most of the 
land was taken from the Irish proprietors and given to 
English landlords. All the privileges and power were 
restricted to members of the Anglican Church of Ire- 
land, and the native Irish were kept under penal laws 
because of their Catholic faith. In a few generations 
most of the Irish natives, many of whom continued to 
speak their Celtic tongue and love the old Celtic tribal 
law, were reduced virtually to the position of serfs. And 
even the English and Scottish colonists in the country, 
a great many of whom were in the northern part, in the 
province of Ulster, were not allowed to develop much 
industry or commerce, but were put under the same sort of 
economic restrictions as those which later on contributed 
to cause the American colonies to rebel and fight for in- 
dependence. 

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Thirteen 
Colonies of Britain in America did win their independence; 
but Ireland was too close to Great Britain to break away. 
Nevertheless, the British Government made some con- 



The con- 
quest long 
incomplete 



Subjection 
of the 
Irish 



The Act of 
Union, 1800 



258 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Ireland 
joined to 
Great Brit- 
ain: the 
United 
Kingdom 



The Great 
Famine 
and emigra- 
tion 



cessions. During the period 1782-1800 Ireland was 
permitted to have a separate parliament, and during this 
era considerable prosperity came to some of the people. 
It was not long, however, before trouble developed. 
Catholics and Protestants quarreled; and some of the 
Irish, desiring to separate completely from Great Brit- 
ain, sought the aid of the French. This was in the 
midst of the great struggle with Napoleon, and so grave 
was the situation that Pitt, the British prime minister, 
resolved to end the danger by binding Ireland to Britain 
more closely than ever before. Accordingly, in 1800, 
an Act of Union was passed which joined Ireland to 
Great Britain in the United Kingdom in much the same 
way that Scotland and England had been united to form 
Great Britain in 1707. There was now to be one parlia- 
ment for the United Kingdom, in which the Irish were 
to have representatives just as were the English and the 
Scots. This had worked very well for the Scots; but 
it failed to satisfy the Irish, who after a while began 
to try to undo it. The failure was owing to the fact that 
most of the Irish were still obliged to make their living by 
working on some plot of ground for which they paid high 
rent to an English landlord, and because the Catholics of 
Ireland, who were three fourths of the population, were 
still partly disfranchised and subjected to discrimination 
because of their faith. Nothing would have done more to 
content them than complete Catholic emancipation, but 
largely owing to the obstinacy of George III this was not 
given until 1829, by which time it was too late to make 
Irishmen feel any gratitude for it. 

Throughout all this time population was increasing 
rapidly, and as these people could only be supported by 
agriculture, the struggle for existence on the limited 
amount of cultivable land became more and more terrible, 
and the danger from starvation always greater. The 
main support of the people was the potato, but in 1846 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



259 



the potato crop was a total failure, and for three years 
afterward there were famine and pestilence and appalling 
misery in the land. A half million or more people perished 
of starvation, and a million and a half others were stricken 
with the fever that followed. From this disaster Ireland 
never recovered. When the famine was past, those who 
could began leaving the country, most of them to settle 
in the United States, where they taught to their children 
and their children's children hatred of the England 
which, they said, had caused their ruin. The popula- 
tion of Ireland was about 5,000,000 in 1801. By 1841 it 
was more than 8,000,000. After 1846 it rapidly dechned, 
and at the beginning of the twentieth century it had 
fallen to little more than 4,000,000. The best people 
had gone to America, as in the eighteenth century they 
had gone away to France. Those who remained in Ire- 
land, assisted often by their brethren in the United States, 
continued to hate England and hope for the day of her 
destruction, which would, they thought, be the day of 
deliverance for them. 

Bad as these conditions were, they had arisen not from 
any special wickedness of Englishmen, but as a result of 
methods that were everywhere applied in times past, 
and because of circumstances particularly unhappy. 
These conditions were changed all too slowly. But in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century a great alteration 
came to pass. The Irish were able to make their protests 
and resistance more troublesome and much more effective. 
Steadily the people of Britain had been becoming more 
humane and more sensitive to wrong and the suffering 
about them. Moreover, Britain was slowly being trans- 
formed into a democracy, with the power of the govern- 
ment increasingly in the hands of the people. And just 
as in the nineteenth century a great series of reforms had 
been carried out for the betterment of the lot of the mass 
of the people in Britain, so, after a while, as the people of 



Failure of 
the potato 
crop 



England and 
Ireland 



260 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Reforms in 
Ireland 



The Land 
Purchase 
Acts 



Britain and their leaders understood more clearly the con- 
ditions in Ireland, they turned themselves to the long and 
difficult task of improving them and undoing the wrongs 
which had once been committed. 

Roman Catholics had been emancipated in 1829, but 
the work of completing the removal of religious dis- 
crimination was effected in 1869 by the disestablish- 
ment of the Church of Ireland, the Protestant Church 
which the British Government had long before established 
and endowed with property, and which had until recently 
been supported with tithes paid by the Catholic Irish. 
Next, urged on by violent agitation and the savage law- 
lessness of some of the Irish, the government gave its 
attention to the. question of the land. Beginning with 
1870 a series of acts was passed by which Irish tenants 
were protected in their tenures, and assured some compen- 
sation for their improvements made on land while it 
had been in their possession; and presently the govern- 
ment itself took measures to see that they were not made 
to pay excessive rents. More important still, another 
series of laws, passed in the last quarter of the century, 
gave government assistance to the peasants so that they 
might buy their lands and become owners themselves. 
They were to repay the government, with moderate in- 
terest, in small payments over a long period of time, the 
terms being so generously arranged that presently it was 
cheaper for an Irishman to buy his land than it was to 
pay rent. By 1910 half of the island was in possession of 
small holders, who were slowly paying the government; 
and it was evident that in the course of time Ireland would 
be owned by peasant proprietors more than almost 
any other country. Slowly but surely now the people 
were laying the foundation for considerable prosperity. 
Further progress would lie in setting up again, if modern 
conditions made that possible, the old commerce and in- 
dustry of the island. 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 261 

But Irishmen were not yet satisfied. They remained Thestrug- 
discontented with the government that made them part p V°^ Home 
of the United Kingdom. Some of them wished complete 
independence and separation, hke the adherents of Young 
Ireland who arose about 1840, and like the Fenians who 
were active after 1860. But most of the people followed 
more conservative leaders. About 1870 the Home Rule 
movement began under Isaac Butt, and was soon carried 
forward by Parnell. This was designed to secure Irish 
self-government for an Ireland which would nevertheless 
continue in the United Kingdom, joined with Great 
Britain. Most of the people in Britain, however, were 
opposed even to this partial separation. Home Rule was 
advocated by the Liberal Party under Gladstone in 1886 
and in 1893; but both times the bill that was introduced 
into parliament failed to be enacted as a law. For some 
years nothing further was accomplished, but the Irish 
under their new leader, John Redmond, continued their 
efforts. The great opportunity came when the Lib- 
eral Party under Asquith and Lloyd George were try- 
ing to bring about their social reforms. They soon 
needed all the support in parliament that they could 
get. The Irish Nationalist members were willing to vote 
with them on condition that, in return, a Home Rule 
bill should be passed. The Liberals were the more 
willing to do this since many of them favored Irish self- 
government. Thus it was by Irish support that the Par- 
liament Act of 1911 was finally put through; and in the 
following year a third Home Rule Bill was brought into 
parliament. 

A memorable struggle followed. It was known that The Third 
the House of Lords would refuse to sanction such a meas- Home Rule 
ure, but no longer could the Lords do more than delay Bill passed 
the passage of any measure. The Home Rule Bill of 1912, 
which satisfied many of the Irish people, was passed 
again by the Commons in 1913 and 1914, in spite of the 



\ I REPUBLICAN 
r~~l UNIONIST 
jHTvl NAHONAUST 




Scale of Miles 

6 10 15 20 25 30 

1 I I ' ■ ' ■ 



11. IRELAND: SHOWING THE SINN FEIN AREAS IN 1918, AND 
THE UNIONIST AREAS IN ULSTER 



262 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



263 



veto of the Lords, and was on the point of becoming law 
when the Great War broke out. 

Meanwhile, however, very serious opposition had 
developed from a large part of the inhabitants of Ulster, 
the northern province, partly peopled by Protestant im- 
migrants from England and Scotland, who declared that 
they would under no circumstances permit themselves to 
be separated from the government of the United King- 
dom. They said that they feared religious and economic 
oppression from the Catholic majority in Ireland if Home 
Rule were established over them ; and they proclaimed that 
they would resist such separation by force. The Great 
War put an end to the question for a while, the Home 
Rule Bill being passed, but the law suspended for the 
duration of the conflict. 

It was most unfortunate that this question had not been 
completely settled long before, since events were now 
to show that it was almost too late to undertake any settle- 
ment at all. For some time there had been coming into 
greater prominence a group of Irishmen who desired to 
revive the Celtic literature and character of the past. In 
1893 they had founded the Gaelic League. From this 
had come a great deal of excellent writing in the so-called 
Irish Literary Revival, and also some attempt to revive 
the use of the Celtic tongue, which by the beginning of 
the twentieth century had almost come to an end in the 
island. This movement went furthei* under the guid- 
ance of men whose motto was Sinn Fein (We ourselves), 
who wished to get complete political independence for 
Ireland. In 1904, under the leadership of Arthur Griffith 
and others, they established the Society of Sinn Fein. 
They endeavored to teach the Irish people to have nothing 
to do with the British government in Ireland. 

The spirit of these people and of other radicals in Ire- 
land was greatly stirred by the mighty changes of the 
war. In April, 1916, some of them suddenly rose in re- 



Ulster 



Sinn Fein 



Ireland and 
Britain 



S64 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 

Rebellion 
of 1916 



An Irish Re- 
public pro- 
claimed, 
1919 



bellion in Dublin. The insurrection was quickly crushed 
and the rebels sternly punished, but large results followed. 
The Irish people had not yet received the Home Rule 
and self-government they had so long sought for, and 
they felt now little disposed to make allowance for the dif- 
culties in which the British Government found itself during 
the struggle of the nations. When the government ruled 
with firmness it alienated most of the people; when it tried 
leniency they merely turned to the leadership of Sinn Fein. 
Many of them now lost their desire for Home Rule, and 
hoped that soon under Sinn Fein they would get complete 
independence. This the people of Britain would in no wise 
consider, since for hundreds of years rulers and statesmen 
had been trying to bring about the union of the British 
Isles, and also because the geographical position of Ireland 
was such that she could control the principal lines of com- 
munication from Great Britain over the seas to the sources 
of her raw materials and her food. If an independent 
Ireland were ever hostile to Great Britain in war, or if she 
got into the enemy's hands, then the British might be 
starved into surrender and their empire destroyed. 

By 1917 the people of Britain were quite willing 
to have Irishmen govern themselves in domestic matters, 
but they insisted that Ireland should continue to be 
united with Great Britain and under the control of a 
central government in the matters which affected them all. 
Mr. Lloyd George, who had become the prime minister, 
called an Irish Convention to settle a scheme of Irish self- 
government, but no agreement could be reached that 
was satisfactory to either of the extreme parties, the 
Ulster Unionists or Sinn Fein. Most of the Protestants 
of Ulster wanted no Home Rule, and the adherents of Sinn 
Fein sought independence. At the end of the war, when 
a general election was held in the United Kingdom, Sinn 
Fein won a sweeping victory in Ireland, electing three 
fourths of the representatives chosen. They announced 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 



265 



that they would not sit in the parliament at Westminster, 
and early in 1919 proclaimed a republic, appealing to 
America and the Peace Conference at Paris to give them 
assistance. At first the resistance to British authority 
was passive, but soon an active rebellion was raging, car- 
ried on by guerilla methods. After the extreme passions 
of the period have subsided it is probable that the Irish 
will have self-government satisfactory to them, yet, in out- 
side affairs, retaining their union with Great Britain. 

The foreign relations of Great Britain during this period 
are best related in other connections. Down to about 
1900 she strove to stand aloof as much as possible from 
continental affairs. Her interests were principally im- 
perial and colonial: the protection of the colonies which 
she had already acquired, and, from time to time, the 
acquiring of new ones. For this a strong navy rather 
than a strong army was necessary, and so Britain did not 
come into rivalry with great military powers like Austria- 
Hungary and the German Empire, but with those, like 
France and Russia, whose interests were also colonial and 
naval, and whose ambition it was to extend territorial 
possessions. All through the nineteenth century there 
was fear that Russia might expand down through the 
Balkans and along the Black Sea mitil Constantinople 
was obtained, or that she might push southward from 
Turkestan until British control of India was endangered. 
So it was that in 1878, during the Russo-Turkish War, 
Britain made ready to oppose Russia as she had done 
before in the Crimean War; and at the Congress of Berlin, 
as before at the Congress of Paris, she succeeded in hold- 
ing Russia back. More acute was the rivalry with France, 
the old enemy with whom in the past England had carried 
on so many wars. With France there had been good re- 
lations after the overthrow of Napoleon I. But. follow- 
ing the establishment of the Third Republic, when French- 
men turned from Europe to build up a great colonial 



Foreign 
relations 



Rivalry with 
Russia and 
with France 



266 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

empire again, and when in furthering this they developed 
strong naval power, Britain became cold and suspicious. 
Fashoda The rivalry culminated in 1898, when British moving 

southward from Egypt met Frenchmen moving eastward 
in the Sudan, at Fashoda. The two nations came to the 
very brink of war, which was only avoided through sur- 
render by France. Thereafter conditions became better 
and 1898 was seen to have been a great turning-point. 
Hitherto Germany and England had had few conflicting 
interests. While the most dangerous opponents of Britain 
seemed to be Russia and France, the partners in the Dual 
Alliance, there were many ties between Germany and 
England. England had been friendly to the Triple Alli- 
ance. In 1887 she had made with Austria-Hungary and 
Italy an agreement concerning the Mediterranean. In 
1898 it seemed for a moment that Germany and Britain 
might come together in a common agreement. But a 
great revolution in diplomatic affairs now took place. 
In less than a decade Britain regarded the German Empire 
as her most formidable and dangerous rival, and helped 
to form the Triple Entente with Russia and France. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General: R. H. Gretton, A Modern History of the English 
People, 18S0-1910, 2 vols. (2d ed. 1913), liberal; Sir Spencer 
Vfalpole, History of Twenty-Five Years, 1856-1880, 4 vols. (1904- 
8), moderate Liberal; Paul Mantoux, A travers VAngleterre 
Contemporaine (1909). 

Biographies and memoirs: Sir Sidney Lee, Queen Victoria: 
a Biography (1903); Edward Legge, King Edward in His True 
Colors (1913), More about King Edward (1913); Alexander 
Mackintosh, Joseph Chamberlain (ed. 1914); Winston Churchill, 
Lord Randolph Churchill, 2 vols, (1906); Stephen Gwynn and 
Gertrude M. Tuckwell, The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. 
Dilke, 2 vols. (1917); W. F. Monypenny, Life of Berijamin Dis- 
raeli, Earl of Beaconsjield, 2 vols. (1910-12), continued by 
G. E. Buckle, 4 vols. (1914-20); Harold Spender, The Prime 
Minister [Mr. Lloyd George], (1920); John (Viscount) Morley, 



DEMOCRATIC BRITAIN 267 

TAe Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols. (1903), admirable; 
Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 3 vols. (1920); John 
(Viscount) Morley, Recollections, 2 vols. (1917); R. B. O'Brien, 
Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, 3 vols. (1898) ; H. D. Traill, Mar- 
quis of Salisbury (1891); Mrs. Humphry Ward, A Writer's 
Recollections, 2 vols. (1918), and Lytton Strachey, Eminent 
Victorians (1919), brilliant and striking studies. 

Social and economic: C. J. H. Hayes, British Social Politics 
(1913), documents; Graham Balfour, The Educational System of 
Great Britain and Ireland (2d ed. 1903); W. L. Blease, The 
Emancipation of English Women (ed. 1913); Charles Booth, 
editor. Life and Labour of the People in London, 17 vols. (1892- 
1903), containing a vast amount of information about poverty 
and the condition of the working class; Frederic Keeling, 
Child Labour in the United Kingdom (1914); R. E. Prothero, 
English Farming Past and Present (1912) ; The Report of the Land 
Enquiry Committee, A. H. Dyke Acland (chairman), 2 vols. 
(1914); A. R. Wallace, Land Nationalization (1882); Sidney 
and Beatrice Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Common- 
wealth of Great Britain (1920). 

The Irish Question: for a general account, E. R. Turner, 
Ireland and England, in the Past and at Present (1919); P. W. 
Joyce, A Concise History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to 
1908 (20th ed. 1914); W. O'C. Morris, Ireland, U94-1905 (ed. 
1909); Ernest Barker, Ireland in the Last Fifty Years {1866- 
1916) (1917); Sir Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century 
(1904); for critical and hostile accounts, T. D. Ingram, A His- 
tory of the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland (1887), 
A Critical Examination of Irish History, 2 vols. (1900), from the 
Elizabethan conquest to 1800; on Irish conditions, Adolphe 
Perraud, Etudes sur VIrlande Contemporaine, 2 vols. (1862); 
Louis Paul-Dubois, Ulrlande Contemporaine et la Question 
Irlandaise (1907); Francis Hackett, Ireland: a Study in Na- 
tionalism (1918). 

Home Rule: The ABC Home Rule Handbook, ed. by C. R. 
Buxton (1912); S. G. Hobson, Irish Home Rule (1912); P. Kerr- 
Smiley, The Peril of Home Rule (1911); Against Home Rule: 
the Case for the Union, edited by S. Rosenbaum (1912). 

The Rebellion oi 1916: The Irish Rebellion of 1916, edited by 
Maurice Joy (1916); L. G. Redmond-Howard, Six Days of the 
Irish Republic (1916); W. B. Wells and N. Marlowe, A History 
of the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (1917). 



268 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

Sinn Fein: R. M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Fein (1919); 
P. S. O'Hegarty, Sinn Fein, an Illumination (1919). 

Recent Aspects: Stephen Gwynn, The Last Years of John 
Redmond (1919); W. B. Wells and N. Marlowe, The Irish Con- 
vention and Sin7i Fein (1918). 

For the student who ca,res to go further afield in his studies 
there is an immense body of important and interesting informa- 
tion concerning a vast variety of matters about Great Britain 
and the United Kingdom in the Parliamentary History, the 
Parliamentary Debates, and the numerous Parliamentary Papers. 



CHAPTER XI 
RUSSIA 

Th h yOoraa, th h oOHjibHan, 
Th h Moryqaii, th h 6e3CHJi&Haa, 
MaiyniKa Pycbl 

[Thou art destitute, yet abounding. 
Thou art powerful, thou art weak, 
O beloved Mother Russia!] 

Nekrasov (1821-1878) 

For ever extending its base, the new Democracy now aspires to 
universal suffrage — a fatal error, and one of the most remarkable 
in the history of mankind. . . . We may well ask in what 
consists the superiority of Democracy. Everywhere the strongest 
man becomes master of the State. . . . 

Among the falsest of political principles is the principle of the sover- 
eignty of the people ... a principle which has unhappily 
become more firmly established since the time of the French 
Revolution. 

Were we to attempt a true definition of Parliament, we should say 
that Parliament is an institution serving for the satisfaction of the 
personal ambition, vanity, and self-interest of its members. The 
institution of Parliament is indeed one of the greatest illustrations 
of human delusion. 

KoNSTANTiN PoBiEDONOSTSEV, Reflections of a Russian States- 
man (trans. R. C. Long, 1898), 26, 27, 32, 34, 35. 

The great turning-point in the history of Russia in the 
nineteenth century had come a Httle before 1870, following 
the disasters of the Crimean War and the death of Nicho- 
las I, when, after a long period of conservatism and re- 
pression, it had seemed necessary at last to undertake 
changes and reforms. The new tsar, Alexander II (1855- 
1881), was a man of humane and liberal disposition. 

At once he reversed the policy of his father and thus 
awakened among progressive Russians the highest hopes 

269 



The era of 
reform in 
Russia: 
Alexander 
II 



270 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Abolition of 
serfdom 
in Russia, 
1859-66 



The nobles 
yield to the 
tsar 



of what would be done. He allowed exiles to return to 
Russia and pardoned other political offenders. The uni- 
versities were given freedom again, and Russians allowed 
to travel abroad. These actions made a most favorable 
impression, and, as is always the case, ardent and enthusi- 
astic people believed that all the ills of Russia were about 
to be cured. Generally the sentiment was much like that 
which had prevailed in France just before 1789. There 
was no desire to overthrow the government, but to reform 
long-standing abuses. This it was thought the tsar him- 
self could best do. 

At once Alexander turned himself to the principal 
problem awaiting solution. Most of the inhabitants of 
his dominions were still partly unfree. Serfdom had al- 
ready been abolished in Poland, and there were many free 
peasants in the north and the Cossacks in the south, but 
over most of the Russian Empire serfdom prevailed. He 
began by freeing the 23,000,000 serfs on the royal domain 
or crown lands. They had a much better position than 
any of the others, being practically free and merely owing 
to the tsar payments that were the equivalent of rent. 
Whenever he wished, he could declare them free, proclaim 
that they were the owners of lands they had formerly 
cultivated under the crown, and abolish the dues they 
had previously paid. In 1859 this was begun and the 
process was complete seven years later. Meanwhile, he 
was busy persuading the nobles not to resist the freeing 
of their serfs also. The change was bound to come to 
pass, he told them, and it was much better that it be 
granted from above than forced by revolution from be- 
low. The noblemen made no determined resistance, and 
in March, 1861, an edict of emancipation was proclaimed 
which abolished all serfdom in the Empire, thus emancipat- 
ing the 26,000,000 serfs of private owners. This edict 
was of immense importance in the history of the freedom of 
the human race. By no other legislation had so many 



RUSSIA 



271 



people ever been made free. It brought serfdom in 
Europe to an end. Thereafter of serfdom and of slavery 
there was very little left anywhere in the world, except 
for the 4,000,000 negro slaves in the southern common- 
wealths of the United States and the slaves still held in 
Brazil. 

The substance of this edict is very interesting. In 
England and France serfdom had disappeared a long time 
before — gradually, as the result of the working of economic 
causes. Serfdom was not abolished in England, but in 
course of time all of the serfs had become free. Such was 
largely the case also in France, for when serfdom was 
formally abolished there in 1789 most of the peasants 
were already free. In Russia now, as in the United 
States two years later, the unfree population was made 
free in a few years, almost at a stroke. In Russia this 
would be very apt to bring about considerable dis- 
location and confusion, as indeed it did in the United 
States, for society was being altered not by gradual 
development, but quickly and artificially, by law. In 
the Southern States of America the enfranchised negroes, 
made completely free by the Federal Government, sank 
back after a while, many of them, into a condition of 
economic servitude. From this condition the utmost 
efforts of their Northern friends could not save them, and 
from it they have only gradually and in part escaped 
after many years, as they have been able to acquire the 
ownership of land. In England, long before, the decline 
of serfdom had made many villeins free, indeed, but driven 
them away from the land which they had cultivated, and 
often reduced them to a worse economic position than 
before. This the Russian Government now strove to 
avert. Not only were the old services abolished, but to 
the free peasants was given that portion of the land which 
formerly they had cultivated, that is to say, a part of what 
had belonged to the nobles or the crown. For the most 



Method 
of the 
emancipa- 
tion 



DiflSculties 
attending 
emancipa.- 
tion 



272 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Results of 
emancipa- 
tion 



The 

peasants 
disappointed 



part the ownership of this property was vested not in the 
individual peasants, but, in accordance with communal 
ideas which had long prevailed in Russia, in the village 
communities or mirs. The former owners were to be paid 
by these communes, to which the government would ad- 
vance the money necessary for this, the communes for 
forty-nine years to pay back to the government 6 per 
cent, of the amount thus advanced. 

This change involved less alteration than might have 
been expected. To the world at large the edict seemed 
a great triumph of liberty, and it did, in conferring on the 
peasants the status of free men and women, abolish a 
condition that discredited Russia in the eyes of the 
world. But emancipation did not make much change 
in the condition of most of the peasants, and doubtless 
nothing could have produced much difference in any short 
time. The peasants who had formerly cultivated land, 
for which they made payments and rendered service, now 
cultivated the same land, or in many cases a smaller ex- 
tent, of which they collectively were owners, but for 
which they had to make yearly payments nevertheless. 
Where before they had been bound to the lord's estate, 
now they were bound to the mir. Before they had been 
serfs to great noblemen; now, it was said, they were vir- 
tually serfs of the State. Indeed they were bitterly dis- 
appointed. They had long hoped that some day the 
lands on which they lived would be given to them free 
of any encumbrance. Furthermore, with the rapidly in- 
creasing population of Russia, it became more and more 
evident in the years which followed that not enough land 
had been given to support the peasants. Most of them 
continued to live in very abject poverty, and in ignorance 
and filth, even though they were now free men. The 
peasants began to hope for a day when more of the lands 
that remained to the nobles and the crown might be 
given them. Only so, it was believed, would such benefits 



RUSSIA 



273 



result as gradually came to the peasantry of France in 
consequence of the French Revolution, 

Other reforms followed. In 1864 the Russian judicial 
system was radically changed, in accordance with prin- 
ciples long before gradually developed in western Europe. 
Judges were made independent, jury trial was introduced, 
judicial and administrative powers were separated, and 
a system of courts established, with appeal from the lower 
to the higher. The vast mass of petty cases, which in all 
countries always make up the bulk of judicial business, 
and which for a long time in England had been dealt with 
by justices of the peace, was now to be handled in Russia 
by similar officials, elected by the people of the locality. 

In the same year also a decree of the tsar established 
a greater measure of local self-government. In their 
pettiest concerns the peasants had some self-government 
in the village communities, or mirs, but this was all. Rus- 
sia was already divided into thirty -four "governments" 
which were composed of provinces and districts. Self- 
government was now given in these larger administrative 
divisions, the provinces and districts. Each of these 
jurisdictions was now to have an assembly, zemstvo, 
made up of the large landed proprietors of the locality 
and of delegates indirectly elected by the peasants and 
people of the towns. Substantially, the nobles, the 
peasants, and the bourgeoisie were represented in the 
zemstvos. The district council or zemstvo was to be 
elected by the people of the locality, the district councils 
themselves were to choose the members of the provincial 
zemstvos. These councils were to impose the local taxes 
and make the local regulations, which were to be carried 
out by standing committees. In 1870 diimas, or councils, 
were established in the Russian cities, the members being 
elected according to the Prussian three-class system, by 
the citizens in proportion to their wealth. 

Other changes were made, and it seemed that much 



Judicial 

system 

reformed 



Local gov- 
ernment 
reformed 



274 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Disappoint- 
ment in 
Russia 



Alexander 

becomes 

conservative 



improvement must result, but disappointment and reac- 
tion soon clouded the prospect. The Russian liberals, 
who had so long been repressed by Nicholas, were at first 
filled with all sorts of pent-up hopes, believing that exten- 
sive reforms would regenerate their country at once. 
These idealists and enthusiasts had no real conception 
of the difficulties besetting any programme of reform in the 
country, weighed down as it must be by the dead 
hand of the centuries of ignorance and oppression gone 
before. Only very gradually could the Russian people 
be changed by any reforms, and no improvement could be 
very marked until a new generation had grown up in the 
midst of the new age. Hence the boundless hopes were 
soon disappointed. The peasants saw little difference 
between their former condition and that in which eman- 
cipation now placed them. The liberals and the radicals 
who had no practical experience, but some knowledge of 
what prevailed elsewhere, were grieved that conditions 
in Russia were not speedily made like what they knew of 
in England and France. Furthermore, the reforms that 
had been made could not be well administered at first, 
since they were opposed by all the conservatives, and no 
band of capable administrators could at once be produced 
to make them work well. Local government could not be 
very efficient until there had been a time of training and ex- 
perience, and the new courts could not give fair and cheap 
justice until upright and capable judges were procured. 

Alexander himself changed also. It is said that he was 
not really a liberal, but one who believed that alterations 
were inevitable, and so preferred to make them in time 
rather than wait for violent upheaval. Furthermore, he 
was surrounded by reactionary officials, who had grown 
up in the reign preceding. In course of time their in- 
fluence was felt. And finally in 1863 came another re- 
bellion of the Poles, after which the tsar soon ceased mak- 
ing reforms. 




12. MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE mSTORY OF POLAND 



275 



276 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Polish 
Rebellion, 
1863 



The masses 
in Poland in- 
different 



It was another despairing effort of the Poles to win their 
freedom. At the end of the eighteenth century their 
country had been partitioned between Prussia, Austria, 
and Russia. Now the country in which most of them 
hved was merely a part of the Russian Empire. But 
the spirit of nationality, which was rising again strongly 
in Europe, aroused certain classes of this people. The 
Italians had just achieved their unity, and the Germans 
were about to make a united nation. Polish patriots be- 
gan to dream of a day when Poland would be free again, 
reviving the ancient glories of the time when she held 
Lithuania and other districts subject. Moreover, the 
tsar had made some concessions to them, enough to 
raise their expectations, but less than they desired. Sud- 
denly an insurrection broke out. The Poles appealed 
to the free nations of Europe for assistance, and much 
sympathy was aroused in England and France and else- 
where. Actually, however, the movement was not 
formidable. The Prussian Government offered help to the 
tsar, but it was never needed. Generally the Polish 
population remained passive. Through long previous 
centuries this peasantry had been bowed under the most 
degrading serfdom, in hopeless poverty, without attach- 
ment to the masters who oppressed them, and without 
any feeling of patriotism for a state which did nothing for 
them. Therefore, when now in the hour of need Polish 
leaders and nobles called upon them to rise for the sake 
of their nation, they looked on with indifference, having 
not yet learned to care enough for Poland, and caring 
little who were their masters. The rebellion was crushed, 
and when this was done the Russian Government took 
measures to crush permanently the power of those who 
had made it. The monasteries of the religious orders 
were suppressed and their lands taken away from them. 
About half of the lands of the nobility was taken and 
given to the peasants, with a view to reducing the nobles' 



ARCTIC^ 




V///A Great Russians 
Little Russians 
B^^=| White Russians 



Caucasians 
Rumanians 
Germans ' 
Lithuanians 



Letts 
l!lll:lliil!l Esthonians 
W^^^ Tatars 
WWX Cheremiss 



V/'/''//A Armenians 
^^^^^ Kalmaks 

GENERAL DRAFTING CO.INC.N.Y. 



13. RACIAL MAP OF RUSSIA 



277 



278 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Agrarian 
changes in 
Poland 



Discontent 
increases in 
Russia 



power and making the peasants friendly to the Russian Gov- 
ernment. These lands were to be paid for, but by a tax 
not only upon the possessions of the peasants but on those 
of the nobles as well, so that the former owners were com- 
pensated only in part. The results of this were important. 
The influence of the upper classes, among whom the 
spirit of Polish nationality was strongest, was crippled. 
Furthermore, the condition of the Polish lower classes 
was improved, and contrary to what was sometimes be- 
lieved in other parts of the world, the economic condition 
of most of the Polish people under Russia was better even 
than in Galicia, where the Austrian Government had done 
little to interfere with the privileges of the Polish nobles, 
but where the peasants continued in low degradation. 
On the other hand, the Russian Government, resolving to 
make a Russian province out of Poland, now forbade the 
use of the Polish language in any government business, in 
university lectures, in newspapers, in theaters, in schools, 
and in churches. Against this the PoUsh people made 
vigorous resistance, and in the struggle that ensued the 
spirit of nationality was at last strongly awakened in the 
mass of the people, who began to hope for a free Polish 
nation in the future. 

Some of Alexander's reforms were put into effect after 
this time, but he now became conservative and suspicious. 
In 1865 the nobles of Moscow petitioned the tsar to 
establish representative government, but neither then 
nor afterward would he grant either parliament or con- 
stitution. He had begun to feel that autocracy might be 
weakened by further concessions, and he resolved firmly 
to uphold his power. Discontent increased. Some thought 
not enough had been done, and expectation was aroused 
by what had been done. Moreover, the mere passage of 
time and the changes going on elsewhere created greater 
demands. So, in the despair which now came to the 
liberals, violence and extreme radicalism took the place 



RUSSIA 



279 



of a progressive liberal movement. Nihilists, extreme 
socialists, and terrorists supplanted the liberal reformers. 
The term nihilist {nihil, nothing) is said to have been 
first used by the Russian novelist Turgeniev in his novel, 
Fathers and Sons, published in 1862, to signify one who 
accepted nothing without critical examination, nothing 
on authority merely. It was soon applied in Russia to 
intellectuals who accepted nothing in Russia as good, 
contrasting what they saw there with conditions in other 
countries. They accepted neither the autocratic govern- 
ment of Russia nor the Greek Catholic faith which had so 
long ruled men's minds there. Turgeniev described his 
character as one who believed that there was no institu- 
tion which ought not to be destroyed completely and at 
once. What was, ought to be overthrown, in order that 
society might be constructed anew. At first all this was 
merely held by intellectuals, who talked about it but 
were not prepared to go further. After a few years, 
however, it was translated into action. About 1871 
there was a great stirring in the minds of economic radi- 
cals in Europe. The Commune of Paris had just at- 
tempted to institute a new social and political order, and 
even its failure had attracted much attention. Further- 
more, the socialism of western Europe was beginning to 
have its effect upon Russian thinkers, and, more im- 
portant still, the doctrines of violence which the anar- 
chists taught. 

Active anarchism had been largely developed by the 
Russian Bakunin, who had elaborated his ideas from the 
teachings of the Frenchman Proudhon. Before Marx 
had begun his great career in the founding of modern 
socialism Proudhon published in 1840 a work in which 
he asserted that property was theft, and declared that the 
existing social system was wrong. But he did not pro- 
pose, as did Marx somewhat later, to substitute public 
ownership for private. He believed that each individual 



The 
nihilists 



The 
anarchists 



280 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Teachings of 
Proudhon 
and 
Bakunin 



Agitation, 
unrest, and 
repression 



should use what he produced with his labor. This led 
him to leave everything to the individual and to attack 
all government. He believed that the best system would 
be that in which there was no government, awarc% (dvcxgxia.) . 
He himself did not believe in using violence to bring this 
about, but his doctrines were taken up by Bakunin, who 
declared that capitalism and autocratic government 
ought to be destroyed through violence, and, where this 
was not possible, through secret assassination and terror. 
Now in Russia, when the efforts of the peaceful radicals 
were checked by the government, and many were pun- 
ished or sent into exile, the movement of reform and 
opposition, after changing into nihilism, a doctrine held 
by philosophers and students, and then into socialist 
propaganda, got into the hands of the anarchists, who 
attempted to create a reign of terror, and paralyze the 
government, or at least take vengeance on their op- 
pressors. 

An attempt had been made to assassinate the tsar in 
1866. Thereafter he hearkened more than ever to the 
reactionaries, and in the ten years after the Polish revolt 
a great number of people were sent to Siberia. Then the 
agitators rose in petty insurrections. As the revolution- 
aries became more violent, the governing classes were 
more repressive. The old censorship was partly revived, 
and the harshest punishments were imposed. In 1878 
a secret committee was established at St. Petersburg to 
carry on war against the government. Literature was 
printed for secret distribution, and bombs were manu- 
factured for the assassination of public officials. In a 
short time prominent officials were done to death by 
members of the society, and attempts were made to kill 
the tsar himself. Martial law was proclaimed, and a 
minister was appointed with the fullest powers of a dic- 
tator. In 1881 the tsar, yielding somewhat, gave his con- 
sent that a general commission, partly representative. 



RUSSIA 



281 



should be summoned to consult about reforms. But on 
the day that this decree was signed a fourth attempt was 
made to assassinate him, and he was blown to pieces by 
a bomb hurled as he was passing through the streets. 
Thus perished the Tsar Liberator, author of the most 
important reform made in Russia for generations, victim 
very largely of the conditions which older times had be- 
queathed to him. The terrorists at once published a 
manifesto in which they promised to cease their activities, 
if freedom of speech, of the press, and of meeting, were 
allowed in Russia, and if a national assembly were elected 
by manhood suffrage. But their deed was about to usher 
in a period of sterner and more terrible reaction, and when 
at last changes were made in Russia, they were to come — 
as in France long before — not through constitutional 
amendment, but through destruction of the old system 
by revolution. 

Alexander III (1881-1894), son of the murdered tsar, 
was determined to avenge the death of his father, and 
crush all elements of disorder. The voice of God, he said, 
bade him strengthen and preserve his autocratic power. 
In temperament he was a reactionary like his grandfather 
Nicholas I. And in the efforts which he now made he was 
constantly abetted by Pobiedonostsev, Procurator of the 
Holy Synod, a minister who at the end of the century 
stood for the conservatism and the reactionary ideas 
which Metternich had upheld at its beginning. Alexan- 
der III believed that the good of the Russian state would 
be obtained if autocracy were strengthened and new liberal 
ideas kept out. He set himself to the task of undoing 
what the reactionaries thought were his father's mistakes. 
Pobiedonostsev, who encouraged him in all that he did, 
developed with sincerity a philosophical basis for the ideas 
which he strove to apply, and, like Metternich, he after- 
ward explained them in his Reflections. He believed that 
autocratic government was not only best for the Russians, 



Assassina- 
tion of 
Alexander 
II, 1881 



Alexander 
III and 
Pobiedon- 
ostsev 



282 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



but best in itself, and that democracy was a cumbersome 
thing which had arisen in the errors of the western peoples. 
In the parliamentary system he not only saw the defects 
which others have seen, but believed it to be useless. So 
Alexander and Pobiedonostsev undertook to keep Russia 
undefiled by contamination with western ideas, to with- 
draw such concessions as had recently been granted, and 
by stern and rigid rule, keep Russia what they thought 
she should be. 
Reaction In a short time the great reforms of Alexander II were 

largely undone. The peasants who had received freedom, 
though little economic betterment, by the edict of emanci- 
pation, were put back under the control of the local 
upper classes as much as possible, in something like the 
same way that the white people of the South immediately 
after the Civil War tried to keep the newly enfranchised 
negroes in inferior and servile position. In 1886 it was 
decreed that breach of contract by a Russian laborer 
should be a criminal offense, thus binding the lower classes 
with stricter economic control. More important still. 
The Land in 1889 the local elected magistrates were replaced by 

Captains officials known as Land Captains, to be appointed by the 

provincial governor from among the upper classes of the 
neighborhood. They were given not only judicial but 
also administrative functions, so that they had practi- 
cally unlimited authority over the peasants, ruling them at 
the behest of the central government. In this way the 
administration of justice sank back into the evil state of a 
generation before. About the same time the character 
of the zemstvos or provincial assemblies and the dumas 
or councils of the cities was changed, by increasing the 
representation of the upper classes and diminishing that 
of the lower, and then taking from the assemblies thus 
altered much of their power. Some of the zemstvos 
had done excellent work in local government and in better- 
ing the condition of the people, but the autocracy of 



RUSSIA 



283 



Alexander and Pobiedonostsev had no desire to see the 
people governing themselves even in their local affairs. 

In upholding their system the methods of Metter- 
nich's age were again employed. There was stern regula- 
tion of the press, and many newspapers were stopped. The 
universities were put under strictest control, and such 
supervision was extended to the lower branches of educa- 
tion. A great part of all the Russian people were illiterate, 
but from those who got an education in Russia all perni- 
cious western ideas were to be kept. The radicals and 
nihilists were remorselessly pursued by the secret police, 
and the police of Russia under the direction of another 
reactionary. Von Plehve, reached a terrible efficiency 
previously not attained. For a long time all this seemed 
to succeed well enough. The tsar spent the thirteen 
years of his reign apart from his people, apart from his 
ministers even, guarded by the secret police and by in- 
numerable sentries, safe from the enemies who continued 
to threaten his life as they had threatened his father's. The 
old system of government and church remained unaltered 
and unshaken. The nihilists lost influence after the 
assassination of Alexander II, and presently they also lost 
heart. The great mass of the people, an ignorant peasan- 
try devoted to the old Russian system and traditions, even 
in the midst of misery which they endured but did not 
understand how to cure, remained passive and loyal. 
There was no powerful middle class yet, and the central 
government with its vast organization of officials seemed 
to hold unassailable position. 

In accordance also with his ideas of governing Russia 
well and making her great, Alexander entered vigorously 
upon a policy of Russifying all the people in his empire. 
He wished to bring about greater unity and strength by 
obliterating the local differences that divided the popu- 
lation of his domain. Such an ideal was no new thing. 
It had been cherished by the rulers of Austria half a 



Repression 



Russifica- 
tion 



284 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The attain- 
ment of 
national 
unity 



The peoples 
of Russia 



century before, and also by the Hungarians as soon as 
they had the power to govern. It was a poHcy which the 
rulers of Germany were vigorously carrying out in Schles- 
\\dg and Posen. Most of the great states of Europe had 
once been formed by bringing together different peoples. 
This was so of France and Spain and Italy, and, though 
long time had obliterated most of the differences, some of 
them still remained. The differences were more striking 
in Germany and the British Isles, for the Poles of Posen 
and some of the Irish longed to separate from the govern- 
ment over them. But the divisions were far more marked 
and much more important in Austria-Hungary and the 
Russian Empire. In the Dual Monarchy Germans and 
Magyars often worked together with utmost difficulty, 
while a great number of Bohemians, Rumanians, Poles, 
and South Slavs were held together only by force. In 
the western world it was not generally realized that the 
Russian Empire contained peoples as diverse and forces 
almost as disruptive as those within Austria-Hungary. 
There was, indeed, a great difference between the circum- 
stances of the two, for whereas the power of the Dual 
Monarchy was based upon a minority made up of Ger- 
mans and Magyars, the power of Russia was founded 
upon the Great Russians who were much the largest, the 
strongest, and the most important element in the State. 
None the less, the vast expanse of the Empire contained 
other elements of much importance which had not yet 
been welded together, while in the outlying portions were 
large districts containing non-Russian peoples who had 
lost their freedom and were held in unwilling subjection. 
All of central and most of north Russia were held by the 
Great Russians. But to the south in the Ukraine, the 
richest district of the Empire and one of the chief sources 
of the wheat supply of the world, the people, while Slavic 
* race, and adherents of the Eastern Catholic faith, 



m 



spoke a dialect which differed from that of the Great 



RUSSIA 



285 



Russians, as much as Low German was unlike High Ger- 
man, and they had developed a literature of their own. To 
the west lay the White Russians, also Slavs and also be- 
longing to the Orthodox Church, but speaking yet an- 
other dialect of Slavic; and the Lithuanians, an Indo- 
European people closely related to the Slavs, with their 
own distinct speech, and adliering to the Roman Catholic 
religion. Over Lithuania, and to a less extent the Ukraine, 
Polish culture prevailed and some of the upper classes 
were Polish, for in the days of its greatness the Kingdom 
of Poland had included these outlying dominions. To 
the east of European Russia the vast reaches of her 
Asiatic empire contained a sparse population of many 
diverse peoples but also, as the principal class, Russian 
immigrants from Europe. All of these parts. Great 
Russia, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Siberia, were sufficiently 
alike to unite naturally, and the local differences that 
persisted, would, under good administration, do no harm 
or else disappear in course of time. 

This was not so in some of the outlying parts which 
brought Russia down to the sea or into contact with cen- 
tral Europe. In the far north were the Lapps, a Mon- 
golian people, unimportant in their distant frozen plains. 
To the south of them, and on the sea, were the Finns, also 
an Asiatic people, whose country formerly had for a long 
time been possessed by Sweden, so that not only was the 
civilization Swedish and the religion Lutheran but the 
people of the upper class were Swedish. Finland had 
long been a distinct state, as Poland had been at first, 
organized as a grand duchy, and connected with Russia 
through the person of the tsar. These people had been 
taken by conquest. They had no real bond of union 
with the Russian people; they were greatly jealous of any 
encroachment upon their privileges, and were determined 
to maintain their identity and character. To the south 
of the Gulf of Finland, on the Gulf of Riga, and down the 



The lesser 

Slavic 

elements 



Outlying 
parts 
of the 
Empire 



286 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Diversity of 
peoples 



The Jews 
in Russia 



coast of the Baltic were provinces — Esthonia, Livonia, 
Courland — taken from Sweden or Poland when Russia 
won her outlets here on the sea. Their people were Finns 
or Letts, a branch of the Lithuanian people, completely 
dominated by a German upper class, the "Baltic Barons." 
Farther to the west and the south, and thrusting itself in 
between Prussia and Austria-Hungary, was Poland, for- 
merly the Kingdom of Poland which Russia had organized 
and united with herself under the tsar, and a part of the 
independent Poland of earlier days. The Poles were 
Roman Catholic in religion, and while Slavic in race, were 
a distinct branch of the Slavic people, speaking a tongue 
as different from Russian as Swedish was from German. 
For a long time they had been the leading branch of the 
Slavs in Europe. Now they continued to feel that their 
civilization was higher than that of the Russians; they 
clung to their nationality and Roman Catholic faith with 
passionate devotion; and longed vainly, it seemed, for 
freedom and independence once more. Far to the south- 
east, between the Black and the Caspian seas, was Cau- 
casia, comprising a great number of little peoples of 
different races and religions, strongly conscious of their 
separate nationality. The great diversity of peoples in 
the Russian Empire was strikingly seen in some of the 
cities on the Volga, where the market places were thronged 
with multitudes of strange people speaking a babble of 
different tongues. 

Nor was this all. In European Russia the larger num- 
ber of the Jews of the world long continued to live, clinging 
to their faith, their customs, and their racial consciousness 
as the Jews have generally done. More important but 
less striking was the German element. The German 
people, whose eastward extension in the Middle Ages 
had laid the foundations of Austrian and Prussian power, 
had continued their movement to the east, and for a long 
time had been penetrating the lands of the Russian Empire, 



RUSSIA 



287 



where by their superior culture and efficiency they were 
able to exploit the natives. In the Baltic Provinces the 
upper class was German. In other places were isolated 
colonies of Germans, who preserved their language and 
racial character. Almost everywhere were German busi- 
ness men and skilled artisans, who controlled or directed 
a great part of the economic life of the state. For a cen- 
tury and a half the tsars had usually married German 
princesses, and been attended by German favorites and 
assistants. All of this was natural enough, and probably 
there would be more of it in the future. Russia, indeed, 
with a huge population of backward people, with illimit- 
able resources and raw materials to be exploited and 
used, lying right to the east of the German Empire with 
its intelligent, highly developed, and aggressive people, 
was for Germans the best field for economic expansion. 
In the days to come almost certainly such relations be- 
tween Germany and Russia will be resumed. 

It had generally been the ambition and the proper 
policy of states to achieve as complete a unity as possible. 
In France and Great Britain such unification had long 
since been almost completely effected. But it was not 
entirely achieved in the German Empire, much less in 
Russia, and only to a small extent in Austria-Hungary. 
Posen with its unwilling and oppressed Poles on Germany's 
border might be a source of grave danger in war; so Poland, 
and Finland, and the Baltic country on the Russian frontier 
might, unless they could be more closely united, bring 
great weakness in time of danger, and try to separate 
themselves. Indeed, when the great disaster came in 
1917, the Ukraine, Finland, and certain Caucasian dis- 
tricts soon broke away, while Poland and the Baltic Prov- 
inces had already been lost. It was, therefore, the desire 
of Russian rulers to do away with the differences that 
divided their subjects, and make of them one Russian 
nation. 



Germans in 
Russia 



Unification 



288 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Assimila- 
tion by com- 
pulsion 



Methods 
of Russifica- 
tion 



In the United States of America, where the population 
had been increased by immigration from all parts of 
Europe, an English-speaking nation, with much coherence 
and unity, had been easily achieved because of an excellent 
system of education and as a result of liberal institutions, 
which, with all their imperfections, gave men great free- 
dom to use the abundant economic resources of the 
country. The children of immigrants in the United 
States of their own accord gave up the alien speech and 
the foreign customs which their parents had brought. 
But in Russia, where there was no general system of 
education, and where the government was comparatively 
inefficient, such unification could only be attempted 
through compulsion, and this the Russian Government 
tried in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 

Under Alexander III continued attempt was made to 
Russianize all the people of Russia. The Jews, the most 
evidently alien part of the population and greatly disliked 
by the people because of their financial ability and hard- 
ness, were subjected to such persecution as to deprive 
them of "the most common rights of citizens." They 
were concentrated together in the west, in what was 
known as the Jewish Pale, forbidden to own land, de- 
barred to a great extent from schools and the professions, 
and often left to the mercy of furious mobs. In Poland 
Alexander continued the work of his father; Poles were 
excluded from the government and Russian was to be 
taught in the schools. In the next reign the particular 
privileges of Finland were withdrawn, and the govern- 
ment put in the hands of Russian officials; in the Baltic 
Provinces Russian was proclaimed as the official tongue. 
The Russian Church, as always, cooperating with the 
Russian Government, forwarded the work. The Holy 
Synod persecuted the members of other sects, forcibly 
converted some of them to the Orthodox Church again, 
and persecuted the missionaries of other sects. 



RUSSIA 



289 



The treatment of the Poles and the Finns awakened 
great sympathy in other parts of the world, and some of 
its results were terrible indeed. But this policy of Rus- 
sification was only one aspect of the extreme nationalism 
which grew constantly so much stronger in the nineteenth 
century. In the latter half of that period in the German 
Empire a whole school of writers and teachers proclaimed 
that the German people were the best and the greatest 
in the world, that their civilization was superior to 
any other, and that it was destined to spread far over 
the earth, and deserved so to spread, since wherever 
it came it would better the people whom it reached. 
So, during the same time there rose up among the Slavs, 
and especially among the Great Russians, a host of 
writers who asserted that almost all of the inhabitants 
of the Russian Empire, and many peoples of central 
Europe and the Balkans, were of the great Slavic race, 
foremost of races in its character and institutions, and 
destined to have the most glorious future of all the peoples 
of the earth. The Russian autocracy, the Orthodox 
Church, the village community of the Slavs, were all 
the best things of their kind. These nationalists in- 
culcated the doctrine of Pan-Slavism, just as in central 
Europe Pan-Germanism was similarly taught. It was 
their object first to unify the peoples within Russia, and so 
make her stronger and then ready to undertake the mis- 
sion of protecting all the other Slavs, perhaps some day of 
uniting them all together. 

The Russian Government under Alexander III was 
able to maintain itself and strengthen the old order of 
things and resist all progress. The tsar and some of 
his principal officials believed sincerely that the system 
they upheld was best in itself and for the best inter- 
ests of the people. In their own way they labored hard 
to make Russia strong and great. But such government 
as they succeeded in establishing, above the influence 



Extreme 
Slavic na- 
tionalism 



Strength and 
weakness 
of the 
system 



290 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 

autocracy 
weakened 
by ineffi- 
ciency and 
corruption 



Nicholas II 



and criticism of the mass of the people, controlled entirely 
by the Autocrat of all the Russias, yet mostly adminis- 
tered by a large number of officials with whom he rarely 
if ever came in contact, and who therefore did much as 
they pleased, contained within itself the causes of its own 
destruction. Many of the officials were corrupt and in- 
efficient, powerful in oppressing the people beneath them, 
but not able to rule honestly or well. After a while 
the Russian Government came to be something like the 
systems that had endured so long in western Europe, 
then fell almost of their own weight about the time of the 
French Revolution. It might maintain itself in ordinary 
times over the multitude of passive Russian peasants, but 
most probably it would be silently undermined by imper- 
ceptible forces, and if some great disaster came it would 
suddenly crash down into ruins. During the last part of 
the nineteenth century the old Russian system was in 
reality being shaken by the Industrial Revolution. Then 
in 1905 the disasters of the Russo-Japanese War shook 
it to its base, and the greater calamities of the War of the 
Nations at last destroyed it altogether. 

The policy of Alexander III was continued by his son 
Nicholas II (1894-1918). The history and the fate of 
this ruler have caused him to be compared with Louis XVI 
of France. Like the last French ruler of the Old Regime, 
he was amiable in character, but also weak and easily 
swayed, whether by the German Emperor in foreign af- 
fairs or his wife and his ministers at home. He took what 
he found, and he upheld it because he believed it was 
good. To diminish his autocratic power would be most 
foolish, he thought. For a long time his most trusted 
adviser also was Pobiedonostsev. Von Plehve was made 
minister of the interior and given enormous power for the 
continuance of his work. Nicholas approved the policy 
of Russianizing all the parts of his dominions. It may 
be that had he been stronger in character, and abler as a 



RUSSIA 



291 



ruler, the tragedy which overwhelmed him and the dis- 
aster which came to Russia might have been averted; 
but it may also be that conditions in the country were 
such, and reforms had so long been repressed and held 
back, that if any violent dislocation occurred reforms 
would be carried out by revolution. 

The forerunner of the great changes soon to take place 
was the Industrial Revolution, after the emancipation of 
the serfs the most important thing in the history of 
Russia in the nineteenth century. Especially under the 
guidance of Count Sergei Witte, who became minister of 
finance in 1893, an immense industrial development went 
forward. The Dual Alliance had just been made between 
Russia and France, and a great amount of capital was 
loaned by the French. Rapid increase of the Russian 
agricultural population, which was obliged to support 
itself upon holdings of land not suflSciently large, drove 
increasing numbers of Russian peasants to the cities in 
search of work, and so provided an abundant supply of 
cheap labor. Tariffs were imposed to protect new in- 
dustries, factories multiplied, and the population of the 
cities rapidly increased. Railroads were constructed or 
extended, until Russian mileage exceeded that of any 
European country, though because of the long distances 
within the Empire railway facilities continued to be more 
inadequate than in any other great country of Europe. 

The consequences of the new industrialism in Russia 
were to some extent what they had been long before 
in England and France and later on in Austria-Hungary 
and the German Empire. About the middle of the nine- 
teenth century more than nine tenths of the people of the 
Russian Empire lived scattered in the country, where they 
carried on their rude agricultural work. Upon this rural 
population, ignorant and extremely conservative, the 
earlier reformers and radicals had been unable to make 
any impression, and so the nihilist movement had come 



The Indus- 
trial Revolu- 
tion in 
Russia 



Social 
conse- 
quences 



292 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Larger 

urban 

population 



Foreign 
affairs 



to an end largely because it remained a movement with 
leaders but without followers among the people. Now 
there grew up a larger urban population, an industrial 
proletariat more quickly responsive to the ideas of leaders 
who wished to change the government and the system 
that existed. In Moscow and St. Petersburg and in the 
Polish cities where the Russian Industrial Revolution had 
begun there were increasing crowds of over-worked, ill- 
paid workingmen, whose economic grievances made them 
very willing to think of changes in the State. There now 
rose up the party of the Social Democrats, who hoped 
that later on the existing system would be overthrown, 
after which, in a regenerated Russia, there might be 
established the socialism which Karl Marx had once 
taught in western Europe. The new leaders obtained 
adherents more easily than the old, yet the urban popula- 
tion of Russia at the end of the century was still less than 
14 per cent, of the whole. But the new ideas soon began 
to affect also the mass of the peasants, hitherto inert. The 
Social Democratic Party of the workmen organized the 
factory operatives of the towns, who tried to better their 
condition and get their reforms by strikes. Among the 
peasants, who had no land or who had not enough land to 
support them, the Socialist Revolutionary Party rose up, 
these peasants desiring to take from the great proprietors 
their estates, which were then to be divided among the 
peasants in small holdings. 

The great changes which shortly took place resulted 
from failure in foreign relations and terrible disasters which 
profoundly affected all the people. For some time in 
the latter part of the nineteenth century Russian for- 
eign policy continued as it had been in the earher part: 
friendship was maintained with Prussia and the German 
Empire, and Russia continued to try to expand toward 
the sea. Her efforts to dominate the Balkans and, per- 
haps, control Constantinople were frustrated by Great 




14. THE RUSSIAN 




MPIRE IN 1914 



RUSSIA 



293 



Britain after the Russo-Turkish War in 1878, and there- 
after by the opposition of Austria-Hungary. Germany 
drew closer in alhance with the Dual Monarchy, but under 
Bismarck's masterly handUng of foreign relations Russia 
was bound to Germany by a secret treaty. In 1890, how- 
ever, the new German Emperor refused to prolong this; 
and three years later Russia joined France in the Dual 
Alliance, thus changing her foreign policy completely. She 
now had increasingly the opposition of Germany as well 
as of Austria in the Balkans, and while continuing to take 
great interest in affairs there she turned her attention more 
and more to the expansion of her dominions in Asia. Long 
before, all of northern Asia, or Siberia, had been taken as 
far as the Pacific, but always the Russians hoped to go to 
the southward and reach ports on the warmer seas. Much 
progress was made, but always in western Asia the power 
of Great Britain in the end blocked the way. 

In the eastern half of the continent Russia's southern 
neighbor was China, and here the prospect of success was 
greater, for China was stagnant and in decay, and, at the 
end of the century, seemed just about to fall to pieces. Still 
farther to the east, it is true, the Japanese, in their island 
empire, had taken up western civilization and methods 
with amazing capacity, and in 1894-5 gained a complete 
triumph in the Chinese-Japanese War. But Japan was 
not yet regarded as a match for any great European 
power, and at once she was compelled by Russia, Ger- 
many, and France to renounce most of the fruits of her 
victory. The so-called Trans-Siberian Railway, which had 
been begun in 1891, and which was to run from Moscow to 
Vladivostok on the Pacific, was being pushed steadily 
forward, and Russian expansionists dreamed of splendid 
possessions soon to be got from the dying Chinese Empire, 
and the acquisition at last of an ice-free port. This was a 
time when apparently China was about to be divided up 
among predatory European powers. In 1897 the Germans 



Russia, the 
German 
Empire, 
Austria- 
Hungary 



Russia, 
China, and 
Japan 



294 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



European 
powers 
seize parts 
of China 



The Russo- 
Japanese 
War, 1904-S 



Japan gets 
control of 
the sea 



seized Kiao-ehau. Next year France secured concessions 
in southern China. At the same time Russia obtained 
much greater ones in the north. In 1898 she procured 
from the Chinese Government the right to build the Siber- 
ian Railway across Manchuria, and she was soon in posses- 
sion of that province. She also got a lease of the great 
stronghold and strategic position, Port Arthur, at the end 
of the Liao-tung Peninsula, from which Japan had shortly 
before been compelled to go, and which she now joined 
with her railway by a branch line, and converted into one 
of the strongest positions in the world. After the Boxer 
outbreak in 1900 the Russians took complete possession 
of Manchuria, and in the years which followed threatened 
to advance farther and absorb Korea, which lay on the 
flank of their communication between Manchuria and Liao- 
tung. Not only had the Japanese long wished to obtain 
Korea, but such was its geographical position, pointed 
directly at the heart of Japan, that in the hands of Russia 
it might be as dangerous as Belgium, in the possession of 
Napoleon or the German Empire, would have been to 
Great Britain. Quickly, therefore, a great conflict loomed 
up. In February, 1904, the Japanese suddenly struck 
and then declared war. 

Japan was greatly inferior in resources, but she had a 
modern army, with brave, hardy, and devoted soldiers, 
and an excellent fleet. Russia, far stronger, with greater 
army and fleet, was badly organized and poorly prepared, 
and fought, moreover, at a long distance from her base. 
Her communications lay practically over the one line of 
the Trans-Siberian Railway. Japan was closer to the area 
of conflict. 

For Japan the first essential and the indispensable condi- 
tion was control of the sea. The beginning of the struggle 
found the Russian fleet in the East divided, part at Port 
Arthur, part at Vladivostok. At once, before declaration 
of war had been made, the warships in Port Arthur were 



296 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Japanese 
victories 
on land 



Mukden 



Tsushima, 
the decisive 
victory 



attacked and greatly damaged. When at last, some months 
later, this fleet came forth to battle, it sustained a terrible 
defeat, and the shattered remains were withdrawn into 
the inner harbor. The squadron at Vladivostok was also 
destroyed, and the Japanese held undisputed control of 
the sea for a time. 

Meanwhile, they had not hesitated to send a great army 
over into Korea, from which an inferior force of Russians 
was quickly driven. Then one Japanese army advanced 
into Manchuria, while another went down the Liao-tung 
Peninsula to lay siege to Port Arthur. Everywhere the 
Russians were defeated. In September at Liao-yang was 
fought the first great battle in which the fearful new de- 
vices of war were used by large armies. The Russians 
were entrenched in a fortified position, but after terrible 
slaughter the Japanese drove them out. All the time the 
Russians were being rapidly reinforced and they soon 
turned upon their enemies, but they had little success. 
Meanwhile, the Japanese attempted to carry the almost 
impregnable fortress of Port Arthur by storm. Hideous 
slaughter resulted, but after a long siege they won the 
commanding position of 203-Metre Hill, from which their 
artillery fire could be directed, and in January, 1905, the 
fortress was taken. At the end of February the main 
Japanese army, reinforced by the army which had cap- 
tured Port Arthur, and now amounting to about 300,000 
men, attacked the Russians who had nearly the same 
number. In the next two weeks,* in a great struggle 
known as the Battle of Mukden, the Russians were driven 
back in complete defeat, losing a third of their number; 
but the Japanese were unable to do that which they strove 
for: surround the beaten enemy and destroy or capture 
their army. 

In all the principal engagements thus far the Russians 
had been beaten. But bad as was their record they might 
still hope for victory in the end, for whereas the Japanese 



RUSSIA 



297 



had brought into play nearly all their force, the Russians, 
who were not yet vitally wounded, had used only part of 
theirs. If they could get control of the sea, the Japanese 
armies would at once be cut off from their base, and 
quickly forced to yield. If this failed, then in a contest of 
resources Japan might first be worn out. The Baltic 
Fleet, what remained of Russia's power on the sea, was 
already on the way around the world. After a long 
voyage it drew near to the Sea of Japan, superior to the 
enemy in numbers, but far inferior in equipment and 
personnel. May 27, 1905, it encountered the Japanese 
fleet under Admiral Togo in the Battle of Tsushima, by 
far the greatest sea fight since Trafalgar, and one of the 
most decisive in history. There the Japanese ships, with 
superior speed and range of fire, took up the position 
they desired, and performed the maneuver of "capping 
the line." As the Russian fleet advanced in column for- 
mation, the Japanese ships at their own distance steamed 
across the path of the approaching enemy, and destroyed 
his ships, one by one. The Russian fleet was annihilated, 
and Japanese control of the sea finally assured. 

The war was not yet won, however. The Russian 
army, constantly reinforced, was now stronger than at any 
previous time in the war. On the other hand, what was 
only suspected then but revealed later on, Japan was al- 
most completely exhausted. If the Russians persisted, 
time was almost certainly on their side. But domestic 
considerations now caused them to lose heart and abandon 
the struggle. President Roosevelt of the United States 
attempted to mediate between the contestants, and their 
plenipotentiaries met at Portsmouth, where a treaty was 
signed September 5. By the terms of the Treaty of 
Portsmouth Russia abandoned to Japan Port Arthur and 
her rights in the Liao-tung Peninsula, gave over her at- 
tempts upon Manchuria and Korea, and ceded to Japan 
the southern part of Sakhalin, an island to the north of 



Struggle for 
control of 
the sea 



The Treaty 
of Ports- 
mouth, 190S 



298 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Discontent 
and disorder 
in Russia 



Terror and 
uprising: the 
Russian Re- 
volution of 
1905 



the Japanese group, and, indeed, forming an extension of 
the archipelago of Japan. The enormous consequences 
that followed from this war, which even yet can but 
dimly be seen, belong only in part to the history of Europe. 
In the Far East Japan became the dominant power, and 
presently seemed to threaten China. In Europe, so 
greatly was Russia weakened that the balance of power 
was completely destroyed, and Germany for a while 
dictated the politics of Europe. 

Russia had yielded to Japan partly because her resources 
were strained, but mostly because such unrest and con- 
fusion had arisen that the whole structure of her govern- 
ment seemed near to collapse. The system which the 
government had upheld by force, by arbitrary arrests, by 
secret trial, by banishment to Siberia, through the power 
of the secret police and the army, could be maintained 
only so long as Russia was at peace. Now the government 
was deeply involved in a distant war, which was never 
popular, which most of the people ill understood, in which 
patriotic fervor was never aroused. Had there been a 
great success, the military glory abroad might have stilled 
discontent at home; but when news came of repeated and 
shameful defeats in Manchuria and on the seas about 
China, popular fury burst out. So the radicals among 
the workingmen of the towns, the radical peasants in the 
country, the liberals of the upper and middle classes, and 
all the oppressed peoples — the Jews, the Poles, the Finns, 
and others — turned against the authorities; and in the 
confusion of the war it was no longer possible to resist 
them. 

In July, 1904, Von Plehve was blown to pieces by a 
bomb. In the following February the Grand Duke 
Sergei, reactionary uncle of the tsar, was assassinated. 
Thereafter a great many murders of officials took place. 
In the cities workingmen declared great strikes, and pres- 
ently a general strike brought widespread demoralization. 



RUSSIA 



299 



In the country districts angry and ignorant peasants drove 
away country gentlemen and noble landlords, burning their 
houses and taking their lands as j>easants in France had 
done a century before. In some parts of the country it 
was difficult to operate the railways, and in outlying 
provinces armed insurrections broke out. On "Red Sun- 
day," January 22, 1905, a great procession of strikers in 
St. Petersburg followed a priest to present a petition to 
the tsar; but the troops fired upon them, and the blood- 
shed aroused wild indignation and horror. During all 
this time the liberals of the upper classes were demanding 
reforms; and they along with many others insisted that 
the war should be ended. 

Nicholas II soon yielded to the general clamor. He 
tried at first to satisfy the people with small reform. Some 
concessions were made to the Poles, the Lithuanians, and 
the Jews; presently Finland recovered her constitution; 
and the arrears due from the Russian peasants were re- 
mitted. But he was urged to summon a national assem- 
bly; so in August, 1905, he proclaimed a law establishing 
an Imperial Duma, or assembly, to advise him in legislative 
work. He dismissed Pobiedonostsev and other reaction- 
aries previously all-powerful, and appointed Witte to be 
prime minister in the cabinet now to be set up. Then he 
issued the October Manifesto which established freedom of 
religion, of speech, and of association, and promised that 
thereafter no law should be made without the Duma's 
consent. A series of decrees provided that the members 
of the Duma should be elected practically by universal 
suffrage. The old Council of State, which had been much 
like a king's council in the Middle Ages, was now changed 
so that part of its members were indirectly elected, and 
it was made the upper house of the National Assembly 
with the Duma as the lower. 

These reforms had been yielded in a period of great 
weakness. It was soon possible for most of them to be 



The first 
Duma pro- 
claimed 1905 



The October 
Manifesto 



Speedy 
reaction 



soo 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 

reformers 

divided 



The "Black 
Hundreds" 



The first 
Duma, 1906 



taken away. The bureaucracy of oflScials and most of 
the powerful upper class were sternly against the conces- 
sions. Moreover, the reformers almost immediately be- 
gan to fall apart. To the radicals it seemed that little 
had been accomplished, and they desired to bring about 
much more fundamental changes. The liberals divided 
into two parties: the "Octobrists" were content with 
what had been granted by the tsar in the October Mani- 
festo, and they wanted a strong united Russia now under 
his rule; the "Constitutional Democrats" or "Cadets" 
under their well-known leader Professor Miliukov, wanted 
a constitutional government like that of England or 
France, with responsible ministers completely controlled 
by elected representatives of the people, and they ad- 
vocated a federal union for the different parts of the Em- 
pire. 

In September, 1905, the war with Japan was ended. The 
government was immediately relieved from much of its 
embarrassment, and it had now a far greater military 
force to be used at home. It was not long before the 
nobles, great landlords, and reactionaries generally, 
united, and becoming stronger, by means of armed forces 
known as the "Black Hundreds," began to drive away the 
radicals and undo the changes which they had accom- 
plished. During the same time the tsar began to with- 
draw the powers he had given to the Duma. In a 
decree of March, 1906, he proclaimed that the fundamental 
laws of the Empire were not to be within the power of the 
Duma, and declared that foreign affairs, the army, the 
navy were exclusively within his own jurisdiction. In 
May, 1906, the first Duma assembled, but it was unable to 
control the ministers, and after a bitter struggle it was 
dissolved in July. The Cadets, who had made up the 
majority of the body, would not accept the dismissal, and, 
retiring to Viborg in Finland, called on the Russian peo- 
ple to support them. But reaction was now running 



RUSSIA 



301 



strongly; many of the government's opponents were put 
to death, and many more banished from the country. 

A second Duma was assembled next year, but the op- 
ponents of the government again controlHng it, and 
again seeking radical changes, it also was dissolved after 
sitting for three months. The tsar now issued a decree 
by which the electoral law was so altered that control 
would pass to the conservatives and the wealthy classes. 
The third Duma, elected in 1907, contained a majority 
willing to acquiesce in the government's policy. The 
Duma, accordingly, remained a consultative body, much 
like the English parliament had been three hundred years 
before, which was, perhaps, as much as the Russian people 
were capable of using in their stage of political evolution. 
The Almanack de Goiha, with what the Russian radical 
Trotzky described as unconscious humor, declared that the 
government of Russia was "a constitutional monarchy 
under an autocratic tsar." Under Stolypin, the principal 
minister, stern measures were taken against the radicals, 
and they were completely suppressed. Some reforms were 
indeed made. In 1906 the peasants were allowed to be- 
come individual owners of their land allotments in the 
Mir; and so far as this was carried out, it brought the old 
communal holding to an end. 

Such was this first Russian Revolution. Temporarily, 
in the midst of the weakness of the government, it ac- 
complished striking reforms, and was not unlike the first 
part of the French Revolution long before. But it was 
soon seen to be more like the Revolution of 1848 in 
central Europe, for its movers were really too weak to ac- 
complish important, lasting results, and it soon lost most 
of its gains in the period of reaction that followed. There 
was needed a mightier outburst, more like the destructive 
part of the French Revolution, to quickly break the old 
order to pieces. 

What the future of Russia might have been had peace 



The second 
Duma, 1907 



The third 
Duma, 1907 



Failure of 
the Russian 
Revolution 
of 1905 



302 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The years 
before the 
Great War 



Russia and 
the Balkans 



lasted, whether the reactionaries would have seated them- 
selves more firmly in power, or whether constitutional 
progress would have gone slowly forward, cannot be 
known. In the years between the Revolution of 1905 and 
the Great War the country seemed to settle down; slowly 
the harsh measures of government were lessened ; the rav- 
ages of the war were repaired; the army was strengthened; 
a great appropriation was made to rebuild the navy; and 
increasingly Russia took her place once more in European 
councils. Again she became a powerful member of 
the Dual Alliance, and presently settling her differences 
with England, along with England and France made the 
Triple Entente. Her expansion in the Far East having 
been checked she turned again with greater interest to the 
Balkans, coming there into more and more dangerous 
rivalry with Austria-Hungary and the German Empire. 
It was this clash of interests which produced the Bosnian 
crisis of 1908-9, in which Russia yielded; the crisis of 1912, 
occasioned by the Balkan War, in which she held her 
own; and the crisis of 1914, which led to the War of the 
Nations, in which presently Russia, Austria-Hungary, and 
the German Empire all went down into ruin. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General: Gregor Alexinsky (trans, by B. Miall), Modern 
Russia (1913), by a socialist; Maurice Baring, The Russian 
People (2d ed. 1911) ; H. G. S. von Himmelstjerna (English trans, 
by J. Morrison) , Russia under Alexander III and in the Preceding 
Period (1893) ; Ludwik Kulczycki, Geschichte der Russischen Revo- 
lution, 3 vols. (1910-14), German trans, from the Polish, covers 
the period 1825-1900; Alphons Thun, Geschichte der Revolution- 
dren Bewegungen in Russland (1883); and for a book revealing 
with peculiar ability and force the part of the ruling class, Kon- 
stantin P. Pobiedonostsev, Reflections of a Russian Statesman 
(trans, by R. C. Long, 1898). 

The Jews: Israel Fried lander, The Jews of Russia and Poland 
(1915). 

Siberia: George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 2 vols. 



RUSSIA 303 

(4th ed. 1897); M. M. Shoemaker, The Great Siberian Railway 
(1903). 

The Russians in Asia: A. J. Beveridge, The Russian Advance 
(1903); Lord Curzon, Russia in Central Asia (1889); Alexis 
Krause, Russia in Asia (1897), hostile; H. Lansdell, Russian 
Central Asia, 2 vols. (1885) ; G. F. Wright, Asiatic Russia, 2 vols. 
(1902), best account. 

Japan: F. Brinkley and Baron Kikuchi, A History of the 
Japanese People from the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji 
Era (1915), best; Marquis de la Mazeliere, Le Japon: Histoire 
et Civilisation, 5 vols. (1907-10); G. H. Longford, The Story of 
Korea (1911). 

The Russo-Japanese War: K. Asakawa, The Russo-Japanese 
Conflict (1904); A. Cheradame, Le Monde et la Guerre Russo- 
Japonaise (1906); A. S. Hershey, The International Law and 
Diplomacy of the Russo-Japanese War (1906) ; A. N. (General) 
Kuropatkin, The Russian Army and the Japanese War, 2 vols, 
(trans, by A. B. Lindsay, 1909) ; The Russo-Japanese War, by 
the Historical Section of the German General Staff, trans, by 
Karl von Donat, 5 vols. (1908-10), it was the German military 
experts who most thoroughly comprehended the lessons of this 
conflict; F. E. Smith and N. W. Sibley, International Law as 
Interpreted During the Russo-Japanese War (1905). 

The Revolution of 1905 and the years following: Alexander 
Iswolsky, Recollections of a Foreign Minister (1921); Maxime 
Kovalevsky, La Crise Russe (1906); Paul Miliukov, Russia and 
Its Crisis (1905); Bernard Pares, Russia and Reform (1907); S. 
N. Harper, The New Electoral Law for the Russian Duma (1908) ; 
Paul Vinogradoff, The Russian Problem (1914) Count Sergei 
Witte, Memoirs (1921). 



CHAPTER XII 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, TURKEY, AND 
THE BALKANS 

A E I O U 

[Austria Erit In Orbe Ultima 
Austriae Est Imperare Orbi Universo 
Alles Erdreich 1st Oesterreich Unterthan] 

Motto of the Hapsburgs, adopted in 1443. 

Ich bin kein Deutscher, sondern ein Oesterreicher, ja ein Nieder- 
oesterreicher, und vor allem ein Wiener. 

Letter of Franz Grillpabzer to Adolf Foglar, November 1, 
1870. 

The Turkish Empire is in its last stage of ruin, and it cannot be 
doubted but that the time is approaching when the deserts of 
Asia Minor and of Greece will be colonized by the overflowing 
population of countries less enslaved and debased. . . . 

Shelley, A Philosophical View of Reform (1820, printed 1920), 
p. 26. 

Austria be- In THE seventeenth and eighteentli centuries the history 

fore 1867 Qf Austria has to do largely with contests against France 

on the one hand and contests with the Turks on the 
other. After the downfall of Napoleon and the decay of 
the Ottoman Empire the activities of the Austrian Govern- 
ment, were directed principally to maintaining the restored 
system in Europe and Austria's primacy among the Ger- 
man peoples. After her defeat in 1866 Austria settled 
her most pressing domestic difficulties by admitting the 
Hungarians to partnership with her German citizens in 
the government, and forming the Dual Monarchy. Shut 
out from Germany and expelled from Italy now she 
turned her attention and ambitions from the north and 
the west to the south, and dreamed of enlarging her do- 

304 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 305 

niinion and expanding her power down the Adriatic and 
down through the Balkans to the yEgean. For more than 
a generation she was successful, especially as she had in- 
creasing support from the German Empire as time went 
on; so that she added to the number of her subject Slavs, 
and continued to increase her influence in Balkan affairs. 
In all this her great rival was Russia, with whom at last 
she came into fatal collision over one of the Balkan states. 
In the Great War which then began she encountered ir- 
remediable destruction. 

By the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 Hungary was The Aus- 
put on a footing of complete equality with Austria, and -^^^ich, 1867 
given entire control over her internal affairs. There were 
now two states, each with its own ministry, its own parlia- 
ment, and its own officials. They were to have one flag and 
a single ruler, who was to be emperor of Austria and king 
of Hungary. Thus they were to be united. But they were 
also to be united with respect to affairs concerning them 
jointly, such as war, finance, and foreign affairs, by a 
joint ministry of three parts, these "ministries" to be 
supervised by "delegations," or committees of the two 
parliaments, meeting together alternately in Vienna and 
Budapest. 

This remarkable system of dual government, which Success of 
seemed strange enough to peoples more uniform and the^us- 
united, lasted successfully for half a century, and was not 
destroyed until the Great War broke it to pieces. It 
was, indeed, a very successful solution of the difficult 
problem of holding together, under one government, two 
peoples not like enough to unite completely, and not strong 
enough to go their own separate way. Its greatest defect, 
as was afterward clearly seen, was that it erected a 
system of dualism in an empire where there were three 
important races, not two. Hungarians and Germans 
were largely content, but the more numerous Slavs were 
not. Indeed, the Ausgleich was an arrangement whereby 



306 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Discord and 
progress 



Difficulties 
under the 
Ausgleich 



a minority, the Germans in Austria, allied themselves 
with a minority, the Magyars in Hungary, to hold in 
subjection the more numerous Slavs whom they ruled. 
And in after years it was to be seen that the Slovaks, the 
Jugo-Slavs, and the Rumanians were just as discontented 
with the Dual Monarchy as ever the Magyars had been 
before the Ausgleich was granted. 

The domestic history of Austria during the period 1867- 
1914 was one of political discord and much discontent on 
the part of the subject peoples, but withal much advance 
in prosperity and material greatness. The Industrial 
Revolution, which had for a generation been changing 
central Europe, went forward in the Dual Monarchy as 
in the new German Empire, though it was far eclipsed by 
the mighty progress there. Railway communications 
were developed and great factories arose in Austria and 
Bohemia, bringing industrial prosperity for part of the 
people. During the second half of the nineteenth century 
also agriculture in the fertile plain of Hungary was devel- 
oped as never before there, until Hungary became one of 
the great wheat-producing districts of Europe. Further- 
more, public improvements were made, and education 
was fostered, not as in Germany and in France, yet so far 
that Austria-Hungary was one of the progressive coun- 
tries of Europe. 

The domestic politics of all this period were concerned 
with the relations between the two partners in the Dual 
Monarchy, and then with the relations between each one 
of them and the subject peoples whom they ruled. By the 
Ausgleich Austria and Hungary were joined together 
under an agreement which was arranged for ten years. 
Accordingly, once in a decade the arrangement was 
brought forward for renewal, and on each occasion there 
was more strain and confusion than a presidential election 
caused in the United States. Each time it was neces- 
sary to renew or rearrange commercial relations and decide 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 307 



about apportionment of contributions to support the 
general government. Austria continued her industrial 
development, while Hungary remained for the most part 
an agricultural district. There was accordingly between 
the two of them the same difference that had once 
existed between the North and the South before the 
American Civil War. In the Monarchy, however, the 
interests of both were subserved by putting protective 
tariff duties upon foreign manufactures for the benefit 
of Austria, and protective duties upon foreign agricultural 
products to benefit Hungarian proprietors. The propor- 
tion to be contributed by each for joint expenditure 
caused much difficulty. By the first Ausgleich treaty 
Austria was to give 70 per cent, and Hungary 30 per cent., 
but forty years later Hungary's share was increased to 
36.4 per cent., she having meanwhile enjoyed much ad- 
vantage. More furious were the disputes which raged 
about the question of the army. Like France, Austria- 
Hungary, after the defeat by Prussia, adopted the system 
of compulsory military service. Since unity was deemed 
necessary in the making of strong military power, the 
authorities at Vienna declared that German should be the 
language of command throughout the army; but the 
Hungarians sternly insisted that their language should be 
used for the troops which Hungary furnished. This ques- 
tion threatened at times to destroy the Ausgleich, and in 
1897 it was not possible to come to any agreement. The 
use of German was enforced, however, by decree of the 
emperor-king. Meanwhile, recruiting and the appointing 
of officers were left to the governments of the two parts. 

During all of this time the two partners were held to- 
gether because people in Austria and in Hungary saw that 
the two countries could not easily stand alone in the midst 
of their hostile subjects and surrounded by more powerful 
neighbors. There were always many differences between 
them; and at times disputes were so furious and bitter 



Renewing 

the 

Ausgleich 



Language of 
command in 
the army 



Ties con- 
necting Aus- 
tria and 
Hungary 



308 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Need of 

mutual 

support 



The end of 
the House 
of Hapsburg 



Death of 

Franz 

Joseph 



that to outsiders it seemed impossible for them to live to- 
gether longer; but always the fundamental need of associa- 
tion remained and was well understood. Furthermore, 
there was a strong connecting link in the person of Franz 
Josef, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. Per- 
sonal qualities and the continuance of a long reign made 
him popular in both parts of his domain, and a long train 
of personal misfortunes endeared him to his subjects still 
further. Much about his character and motives remains 
ill understood, but the series of strange and terrible 
calamities which came to him made him the most ro- 
mantic and pathetic of all the great figures of Europe. 

He came to his throne young and in the midst of the 
disasters of 1848. Not many years later he lost in wars 
with France and with Prussia the Italian provinces, which 
seemed then his brightest possession, and the position of 
leadership in Germany which Austria had so long had. 
The State was constituted anew, and much prosperity 
came to it. But in the year after the disastrous war with 
Prussia, his brother, Maximilian, who had been made 
emperor of Mexico by France, and then deserted on the 
intervention of the United States, was captured by the 
enraged Mexicans and shot as a conspirator against them. 
In 1889 his only son, the Archduke Rudolph, died, sup- 
posedly by suicide, in the midst of mysterious and romantic 
circumstances never entirely cleared up. Eight years 
after this the emperor's wife, the beautiful Elizabeth, 
from whom he had long been estranged, was stabbed to 
death by an anarchist at Geneva. Finally, after the 
fates had dealt with his house as in some olden tragedy 
of Greece, his nephew, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 
heir now to the throne, was assassinated at Sarajevo in 
Bosnia. In 1916, during the war which followed hard 
on this deed, the aged emperor, who had survived all the 
members of his house, passed away just before his empire 
was destroyed. 




I 

< 

I— I 

H 

< 

o 

I 

u 
< 



3C9 



310 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Parts of the 
Dual Mon- 
archy 



The govern- 
ment of 
Austria 



In the Dual Monarchy the Empire of Austria included 
the archduchies of Upper Austria and Lower Austria, the 
kingdoms of Bohemia, Dalmatia, and Galicia, and the 
various districts of Bukowina, Carinthia, Carniola, Istria, 
Moravia, Salzburg, Styria, and Trieste. The Kingdom of 
Hungary included Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia- 
Slavonia. The total area of Austria was 116,000 square 
miles, a little less than the territory of the Kingdom of 
Hungary, which was 125,000. In 1910, at the time of the 
last census, the population of Austria was 28,000,000 
while that of Hungary was 21,000,000. The total popula- 
tion, including that of Bosnia-Herzegovina — which was 
annexed to Austria-Hungary jointly, in somewhat the 
way that Alsace-Lorraine had been made a Reichsland 
in the German Empire — was 51,000,000. Of the inhabit- 
ants of the Monarchy a fifth were Germans and a little 
less than a fifth were Magyars. The remaining popula- 
tion embraced a diversity of peoples. In Austria, besides 
the Germans, there were: West Slavs (Czechs) in Bohemia 
and Moravia; West Slavs (Poles) and Little Russians 
(Ruthenians) in Galicia ; Rumanians in Bukowina; Italians 
in the Trentino; and South Slavs (Slovenes) in Carniola. 
In Hungary, besides the Magyars, were the Rumanians of 
Transylvania, West Slavs (Slovaks) in the north, and 
South Slavs (Serbs and Croatians) in Croatia-Slavonia in 
the south. The population of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
was entirely Jugo (South) Slavic. 

By the constitutional laws of 1867 the government of 
Austria was vested in the emperor and in the Reichsrath 
(imperial assembly) , a parliament composed of two houses, 
a house of lords consisting of peers hereditary or appointed 
by the emperor for life, and a house of representatives, 
consisting of members elected at first by the provincial 
diets or assemblies, but after 1873 chosen directly by a 
narrow electorate. The franchise was widened by an 
electoral reform in 1896, and in 1907 equal and direct 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 311 



manhood suffrage was established. The government was 
carried on by ministers, responsible to the Reichsrath in 
theory, but actually dependent mostly on the emperor. 
He was also easily able to control the Reichsrath, of which 
the upper house was extremely conservative and aristo- 
cratic, and the lower divided among numerous political 
parties and constantly torn by bitter racial disputes. 

The general policy of the Austrian Government was the 
maintenance of the power and privileges of the German 
inhabitants who had brought together the parts and long 
been the masters. Out of 28,000,000 inhabitants they 
numbered only 10,000,000; and with the development of 
greater national feeling in the different parts their task 
became constantly harder. Some local self-government 
was granted to the different parts, but not enough to 
satisfy the local populations. The Czechs of Bohemia 
had long wanted an autonomy like that which had 
been granted to the Hungarians, and often in their fury 
and disappointment they adopted such tactics in the 
Ahgeordnetenhaus, the lower chamber of the Reichsrath, 
that the uproar and confusion made it impossible for any- 
thing to be done. The Slovaks and the South Slavs 
nursed their grievances, and, in spite of no little advance 
in prosperity, longed for their freedom. In Galicia the 
Austrian Government succeeded better than anywhere 
else, but that was because it conserved the privileges 
of the Polish upper class, and so won their good will, while 
it left the Ruthenians and the Polish masses in lowly 
condition. 

The system of government in Hungary had been 
gradually worked out through a long course of time, but it 
was founded directly upon a series of laws passed during 
the Hungarian uprising in 1848, suppressed as soon as the 
uprising failed, but guaranteed in 1867 when the Aus- 
gleich was agreed on. It was vested in the king of 
Hungary, who was emperor of Austria, and exercised by 



Peoples in 
Austria 



The govern- 
ment of 
Hungary 



312 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



In the hands 
of the 
Magyars 



General 
character of 
govern- 
ment in the 
Dual Mon- 
archy 



Foreign 
policy 



his ministers who were responsible to a parhament. This 
parhament consisted of an upper aristocratic house, the 
Table of Magnates, most of them hereditary noblemen, and 
a lower, the Chamber of Deputies, consisting of members 
almost all of whom were elected from Hungary proper by 
a narrow electorate rigidly limited by property quali- 
fications. This electorate was so arranged as to keep 
power altogether in the hands of the 10,000,000 Hungar- 
ians, who were a little less than half of the entire popula- 
tion. Local self-government was given to the subject 
peoples in Hungary, the Rumanians of Transylvania, and 
the South Slavs of Croatia-Slavonia, more grudgingly than 
the Germans of Austria gave it to the peoples in their 
portion. 

Altogether, in the Hapsburg Monarchy while govern- 
ment was modelled on the British system of ministers 
responsible to a parliament dependent on the people, 
such government was actually established only in small 
part. In Hungary most of the people had no voice in 
electing representatives, and until 1896 this had been the 
case in Austria also. In both parts of the Dual Monarchy 
government was in the hands of ministers controlled by 
the crown, and a bureaucracy, cumbersome and ineffi- 
cient, also dependent on the crown. 

The foreign policy of Austria-Hungary during this 
period had to do with ambitions in the Balkans and at- 
tempts to extend to the south. With the new German 
Empire cordial relations were soon established. With 
respect to Italy the old ambitions were completely given 
over. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, while 
other European powers were making themselves greater by 
colonial expansion, the Dual Monarchy hoped to reach 
southward along the eastern shore of the Adriatic and 
down through the Balkans to an outlet, perhaps at Salon- 
ica. As early as the War for Greek Independence it 
was evident that Austria and Russia were suspicious of 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 313 



each other in rivalry over the Balkans. This was more 
apparent in 1877, when the Russo-Turkish War began. 
In the next year, at the Congress of Berlin, when Russia 
was forced to let a great part of what she had accomplished 
be undone, Austria-Hungary was given the administration 
of the two Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
peopled with South Slavs, and conveniently adjoining her 
own Slavic provinces of Dalmatia and Croatia-Slavonia. 
In the following year she joined the German Empire in 
alliance, from which she got added protection against 
Russia, though Germany was not yet disposed to forfeit 
the friendship of Russia. 

Year by year the rivalry of Austria-Hungary and 
Russia for greater power and influence in the Balkans in- 
creased, and the small countries which had recently arisen 
from the decay of Turkey were the scene of continued 
plots and intrigue. In 1897 an agreement was made 
between Austria and Russia, and their "superior interest" 
in the provinces of European Turkey was recognized by 
the Great Powers. About that very time, however, began 
the new direction of German policy which tended toward 
expansion in Asiatic Turkey, and which therefore sup- 
ported Austria-Hungary. The two powers now worked 
together in close understanding, for predominant influence 
in the Balkans and at Constantinople, for the gradual ex- 
clusion of Russia, and the connecting of the German- 
planned Bagdad Railway with the road running from 
Constantinople to Vienna and Berlin. The first great 
clash came in 1908-9 when the Dual Monarchy annexed 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, in defiance of Russia, who 
yielded to German threats. Four years later came the 
Balkan Wars in which Germany and Austria lost influence 
and prestige, since in the first war they favored Turkey 
and in the second Bulgaria, both of whom were completely 
defeated. It was partly because they were trying to 
recover what had been lost that the ultimatum was sent 



Rivalry with 
Russia 



Austria- 
Hungary, 
Russia, and 
the Balkans 



314 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Dual 
Monarchy 
and the Bal- 
kan States 



Neighbor- 
ing South- 
Slavic 
states 



to Servia in 1914, which occasioned the conflict that 
shattered German power and destroyed the Austro- 
Hungarian state. 

It was not merely ambition but sound pohcy that 
caused statesmen of the Dual Monarchy to take interest 
in Balkan affairs. As the Ottoman Empire had shrunk 
and decayed in Europe part of the South Slavic and 
Rumanian people whom Turkey ruled were incorporated 
in Austria and in Hungary, while part of them afterward 
shook off the sultan's yoke and set up independent states 
for themselves. In Transylvania and Bukowina there 
were more than 3,000,000 Rumanians, while in Rumania, 
just across the Carpathian Mountains, there were 8,000,000 
more. In the southern provinces of the Monarchy just 
before the war there were 7,000,000 Jugo-Slavs, while 
across the border in Montenegro and Servia there were 
5,000,000. Once these people had been glad to escape the 
Turkish yoke by being taken into the Austrian dominions, 
and now in the Dual Monarchy they had no little pros- 
perity and progress. But meanwhile, Rumania and Servia 
had grown up, and in course of time, as the Ruman and 
South Slavic subjects of Austria-Hungary saw themselves 
treated as inferiors and debarred from equal rights, they 
began to yearn for the day when they might be united 
with their brethren. Thus the statesmen of the Dual 
Monarchy saw it threatened with disintegration. Just 
before the Great War, it is said, the ill-fated Archduke 
Franz Ferdinand cherished the scheme of admitting the 
Slavs to a partnership with Magyars and Germans; but 
this plan, which would probably have failed to cure the 
ills of the state, was never tried. Generally it had seemed 
best to the leaders to pursue an aggressive policy, and try 
to control the small neighboring states in the Balkans, 
and thus make it impossible to draw parts of the Mon- 
archy away. In 1883 an alliance was made with Rumania 
which became thus an appendage of the Triple Alliance. 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 315 



For some time very friendly relations were established 
with Servia, while Russia had great influence in Bulgaria; 
but after a while Bulgaria was drawn close to the Teutonic 
Powers, and Servia came under the influence of Russia. 

For more than a decade previous to the Great War 
Servia dreamed of future greatness, to come when the 
Dual Monarchy broke up. She was overwhelmed with 
fury and despair when Bosnia and Herzegovina were 
annexed, because she had hoped to get them for herself, 
but she was compelled to submit. From that time on 
Austria seemed resolved to make Servia completely sub- 
servient, and thus, as she thought, lessen the possible 
danger from her. During the First Balkan War she 
prevented Servia from getting an outlet on the Adriatic 
Sea, and in the Second Balkan War she encouraged 
Bulgaria to attack her. After 1913 Servia, stronger than 
before, was also more ambitious, and altogether hostile to 
her neighbor. Discontented South Slavs in the Dual 
Monarchy were encouraged and supported by Servians, 
until finally the menace became a grave one. So Austria- 
Himgary resolved to reduce Servia to vassalage, and 
wished to attack her in 1913. In the next year the assas- 
sination at Sarajevo was ascribed to Servian plotting, 
though no proofs were ever given, and then the ultimatum 
was sent from Austria to Servia which led straight to the 
War of the Nations. 

The history of the Balkans in the nineteenth century is 
largely a story of the disintegration of the Turkish Em- 
pire in Europe and the establishment of separate states 
from its ruins. The Turks, who two centuries before 
had been dreaded by all Christian peoples, were now weak 
and decadent, and would undoubtedly have suffered the 
fate of the Poles had they not been farther removed from 
strong neighbors, and had the Great Powers not been too 
jealous to unite to despoil them. They had come into 
Europe from Asia Minor in the fourteenth century. In 



The Dual 
Monarchy 
and Servia 



The former 
greatness 
of Turkey 



316 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Ottoman 
power estab- 
lished in 
Europe 



Decline of 
the Ottoman 
power 



1361 they took Adrianople. In 1389 they broke the 
power of Servia; and soon afterward overran Bulgaria 
and Wallachia. A pitiful remnant of the Eastern Roman 
Empire survived on the Bosporus, but in 1453 they cap- 
tured Constantinople, which was thenceforth the center 
of their power. Their dominion was rapidly extended 
up through the Balkans ; Hungary was overrun ; and turn- 
ing to the east they subjected the Russians and the Tar- 
tars along the northern shore of the Black Sea. For a 
while they were the greatest naval power in the world; 
their galleys swept the eastern Mediterranean; they con- 
quered the islands and much of the north African shore. 
In 1571 the Christian powers of the west combined to 
defeat them in the great naval battle of Lepanto, and 
this was in fact a decisive triumph. But for another 
century the Ottoman power continued to be mighty and 
terrible on land. The king of Poland was reduced to pay 
tribute, and in 1683 Vienna itself was besieged by a Turk- 
ish host. 

But the foundations of this mighty structure presently 
began to decay, and though the edifice long stood erect in 
apparent splendor, it was destined to collapse completely. 
Gradually the vigor of the rulers declined amidst the lux- 
ury and the pleasures of Constantinople. The Janissaries, 
the terrible organized mercenaries, who had so long de- 
feated all their enemies, fell behind rival armies in 
discipline and military equipment, and were finally able 
to inspire terror only in the Turkish Government itself. 
Moreover, the Turks had never perfected any strong 
organization in their empire. Always deficient in political 
ability, they depended on force and chicane for holding 
together their dominions. Like the Mongols once in 
Russia, the Turks ruled their Christian subjects in the 
Balkans by taking advantage of differences in race and 
religion to keep them apart, and by punishing them 
savagely if they resisted or failed to pay tribute. They 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 317 



did not attempt really to incorporate the Servians, the 
Bulgarians, the Hungarians, and the Greeks in a compact 
Ottoman empire, but reduced them to serfdom or put 
them under tribute, otherwise leaving them largely to 
themselves, so long as they continued submissive. Always 
the Turks were a minority of the population, and so far as 
they lived among their subjects they lived as an upper, 
ruling class, never winning affection or loyalty or grati- 
tude from their subjects, and never minghng with them 
to form one united people. Misgovernment and oppres- 
sion of subject Christians by the Turks proceeded less from 
Turkish brutality than incapacity. And it must be 
remembered that during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, at a time when Catholics in Ireland and England 
and Protestants in the Austrian dominions suffered under 
disabilities and persecution, the Ottoman Empire allowed 
the greatest measure of religious freedom permitted by any 
government in Europe. In Turkey Christians exercised 
their religion, as a rule, unmolested, and were freely ad- 
mitted to hold office in the State. 

Such an empire, like the ancient empires of the east, 
could be held together only so long as its military organiza- 
tion remained strong enough to crush all rebellions within 
and meet its enemies without. During the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries this was so. The turning-point 
came in 1699, when by the Treaty of Carlowitz the Turks 
were forced to yield their outlying possessions in Hun- 
gary, in Transylvania, on the northeastern Adriatic, and 
about the Sea of Azov. In the eighteenth century the 
Ottoman Empire continued to yield before Austria and 
Russia. In the nineteenth it began to break up from 
within. 

In the days of their greatness, after Constantinople fell 
and the Janissaries encamped before Vienna, the Turks 
had been a concern and a danger to all Europe, though the 
protection of Christian Europe usually fell to Austria 



Organiza- 
tion of the 
Ottoman 
power 



Rapid 
decline 



Rivalry 
concerning 
the spoils 



318 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Balkan 
Question 



England, 
then Austria, 
opposes 
Russia 



alone. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
while the strength of the Turks was ebbing, their European 
provinces became a great international question, until at 
last the Balkans were recognized as the principal danger 
spot of Europe. This was because of the intense rivalry 
which arose for possession of the spoils. In the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, especially under Catherine 
II, Russia expanding southward took the Turkish terri- 
tories along the north of the Black Sea, and afterward 
threatened to go slowly forward until she dominated the 
Balkans and arrived at Constantinople. Austria was 
much interested in this, for already she had many sub- 
jects who had once belonged to Turkey, and expected 
to get more. At first, however, she was not greatly hostile 
to Russian expansion, and in 1790 an arrangement was 
planned by which the Ottoman dominions should be 
divided between Austria and Russia. England, however, 
already dreaded the appearance of a great European 
power on the ruins of Turkey, and exerted herself then, as 
afterward, to save the Ottoman state from destruction. 

During the first half of the nineteenth century England 
was the principal supporter of Turkey, and, along with 
France, fought the Crimean War in 1854 to save her from 
Russian aggression. She intervened decisively also in 
1878, and again saved Turkey from destruction. But 
after that time Austria came more and more to be Russia's 
principal opponent in the Balkans, dreading, as she did, 
to see the extension of Russian power southward, or the 
bringing of the new Balkan states into dependence on her. 
During much of this time either Russia or Austria would 
gladly have taken the Ottoman provinces, but failing that, 
each was resolved that no other power should get them. 
Gradually it was recognized that a European war might 
very easily grow out of attempted aggrandizement by any 
of the great powers in the Balkans; and so, for the most 
part, the powers exerted themselves to preserve the Otto- 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 319 



man state. It was due almost solely to this that Turkey 
survived down to the time of the Great War, and owing to 
similar rivalries and international conditions part of her 
has still been allowed to remain. 

But by 1914 only a vestige of Ottoman power remained 
in Europe. In less than a century she had lost all her 
possessions in Africa, and in Europe saved only a small 
district around Constantinople. The principal steps in 
the dismemberment of European Turkey since the time of 
the French Revolution were: the Treaty of Adrianople 
between Russia and Turkey in 1829, which ended the 
War for Greek Independence; the Treaty of San Stefano 
and the Congress of Berlin which brought to an end the 
struggle between Russia and Turkey in 1877-8; and the 
Treaty of London, 1913, which concluded the First Bal- 
kan War. All of the crises that led to these settlements 
were brought about partly because of misgovernment and 
oppression of Christian subjects by the Turkish author- 
ities, partly because of the indignation which this aroused 
either in Russia or among the Balkan peoples themselves, 
and partly because of the desire of Russia or Austria at 
first, and later of the Balkan States, to seize for them- 
selves what was slipping away from the weakening grasp of 
the Turks. 

In the early part of the nineteenth century the sub- 
merged peoples of Turkey began to seek their freedom at 
the same time that the Turkish dominions were beginning 
to crumble from internal decay. Ali, pasha of Janina, 
first made himself almost independent in Albania, then 
as governor of Rumelia began to intrigue with foreign 
powers. In 1804 the Serbs, still under Turkish rule, began 
a long struggle for their independence, and in 1817 some 
of them won their autonomy, thus laying the foundation 
of the Servian kingdom . 

Meanwhile, the Greeks had begun a struggle which 
aroused sympathy all over Europe. They had, indeed, 



The dis- 
member- 
ment of Tur- 
key, 1829- 
1913 



The be- 
ginning of 
Servia 



Revolt of the 
Greeks 



320 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Condition of 
the Greeks 



The inde- 
pendence of 
Greece 



been treated with considerable moderation, and in the 
islands of the .^gean they were already practically in- 
dependent. They had retained their distinctive character. 
In the Greek Catholic Church they had a strong organiza- 
tion which served to maintain their national spirit and 
urge them forward to obtain their independence. The 
spirit of nationality was aroused among them early in the 
nineteenth century by revived study of the Greek classics 
and recollections of the Hellas of old. In 1814 was 
founded the Hetairia Philike (friendly union), a secret so- 
ciety something like the Carbonari in Italy later on. Re- 
volt broke out in 1821. It was led by Prince Ypsilanti 
in the north and by various others of the Hetairia 
in the Peloponnesus or Morea. The northern movement 
was broken at once, but in the south the Greeks had com- 
mand of the sea, and a long struggle inclined in their 
favor. In 1824, however, the sultan called to his as- 
sistance the great pasha, Mehemet Ali, of Egypt, and the 
powerful fleet that was now brought to the Turkish side 
soon reduced the Greeks to despair. Unless they could 
get help from abroad it was apparent that their cause was 
doomed. Volunteers from other countries, notable among 
whom was the English poet. Lord Byron, enlisted in their 
service, but were able to accomplish little of importance. 
The European governments, whatever the sympathies 
of their people, were at first reluctant to intervene, be- 
cause it was clearly understood by Metternich and the 
principal statesmen then that any disturbance of the 
existing arrangement might in the end destroy what had 
been established by the Congress of Vienna. In 1823 
Great Britain had recognized the belligerency of the 
Greeks, and already the sympathy of the Russian people 
had been stirred profoundly; but the only result was 
negotiations which dragged on and led to nothing. Russia 
wanted no independent Greece, while Austria and Eng- 
land, fearing that a dependent Greek state would really 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 321 



depend upon Russia, preferred, after a while, that the 
Greeks be made entirely independent. In 1827, however, 
the combined fleets of England and France, attempting 
to enforce a truce between the Greeks and the Turks, 
destroyed the fleet of Mehemet Ali at Navarino. The 
sultan now rashly declared war. Then a Russian army 
entering the Balkans pressed on to Constantinople itself. 

By the Treaty of Adrianople Turkey practically ac- 
knowledged the independence of Greece, which was defined 
and established at an international conference in London 
three years later. At the same time she acknowledged 
the autonomy of Servia; of Moldavia and Wallachia, the 
Danubian Principalities, which became a Russian pro- 
tectorate ; and gave up to Russia such claims as she had to 
certain districts in the Caucasus, which Russia afterward 
acquired for herself. Thus by the settlement of 1829 
Turkey lost her outlying European provinces — Greece, 
Servia, and what was afterward the Rumanian Kingdom. 

The old conditions continued in what was left to her, for 
in the midst of the great growth and changes of the 
nineteenth century the Turks changed almost not at all. 
There was the same stagnation, inefiiciency, heavy op- 
pression, and lack of progress, and the fierce wildness of 
the rude and long-oppressed Christian population was 
suppressed from time to time by outbursts of fearful 
cruelty and destruction. About 1875 an insurrection 
broke out in Herzegovina, a district to the west of Servia, 
peopled by Serbs, but still under Turkish rule. While 
the rebels were being encouraged by the surrounding 
states, Montenegro, Austria, and Servia, in 1876 the 
inhabitants of Bulgaria, a large province east of Servia 
and south of the Danube, and so nearer to Constantinople 
and Turkish oppression, rose against the Turks also. 
Servia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey, and 
great sympathy was aroused in Russia, many of the 
tsar's subjects enlisting to fight as volunteers. Generally 



The Treaty 
of Adriano- 
ple, 1829 



Revolt of the 

Bulgars, 

1876 




17. THE BALKANS IN 1878 
SiSt 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 323 



the Turks were successful, but the fearful atrocities com- 
mitted by them upon the Bulgarian peasants aroused the 
strongest indignation and horror in Europe, especially 
in England, where Gladstone declared that the Turks 
must be expelled "bag and baggage" from Europe, and in 
Russia, which made ready to intervene. 

In the spring of 1877 Russia did begin war. Rumania, 
declaring now complete independence, jomed her, and the 
allies pushing rapidly southward soon seized the passes of 
the Balkan Mountains which were the gateway into the 
country. At Plevna, in northern Bulgaria, where a net- 
work of highways converged, Osman Pasha, an able Turk- 
ish commander, fortified himself to oppose them. The 
allies had not suflScient forces completely to mask this 
fortress and also advance against Constantinople, but for 
some time they were unable to take it. In December, 
however, Plevna fell, after a memorable siege. In an- 
other month the Russians had pushed on and taken 
Adrianople, and Constantinople itself would have fallen 
except for the rising jealousy of Austria now, and 
above all the determined hostility of Great Britain. None 
the less, in March, 1878, the Turks concluded with Russia 
the Treaty of San Stefano by which at last was acknowl- 
edged the complete independence of Montenegro and 
Servia, to whom some territory was yielded; while almost 
all of Turkey's European territory, except for a small area 
including Adrianople and the capital and another area in 
Albania on the Adriatic, was given to a new Bulgaria, 
autonomous but tributary to the sultan. 

This would have made Bulgaria the most important 
state in the Balkans, and for some time, doubtless, she 
would have been largely dependent on Russia. But 
owing to the efforts of Austria and Great Britain this 
treaty was almost at once undone at the Congress of 
Berlin, which reduced Bulgaria and restored to the sultan 
much of what he had lost, though Bosnia and Herze- 



The Russo- 
Turkish 
War, 1877-8 



The Treaty 
of San Ste- 
fano, 1878 



The Treaty 
of Berlin, 
1878 



324 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Continued 
decline of 
Turkey 



Loss of 
Bosnia and 
Herzegovina 



Loss of 
Tripoli 



govina were put under the administration of Austria- 
Hungary. The result of this was that Turkey, though con- 
siderably reduced, still stretched from the Black Sea to 
the Adriatic Sea and still rested on the ^Egean. She con- 
tinued to be the foremost power in the Near East. 

In the generation that followed the old conditions 
lasted on. The decline and decay of Turkey continued, 
although after 1876 she was ruled by Abdul Hamid, a man 
of sinister and evil reputation, but subtle and skilful in 
upholding Turkey by playing upon the rivalries of the 
powers. Meanwhile, the new Balkan states were growing 
in experience and strength, and beginning to hope for the 
day when the complete break-up of the Ottoman power 
would enable them to become greater still. 

At the end of the century as at the beginning, the decay 
of the Turkish Empire continued. As the atrophy pro- 
ceeded all the outlying members had dropped off or had 
been cut away. In the early part of the twentieth century 
nothing was left in Africa but Tripoli; Arabia and other 
districts in Asia no longer obeyed Ottoman commands; in 
Europe Turkish dominion had steadily shrunk in the Bal- 
kans. In 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and 
Herzegovina; and Bulgaria declared her complete inde- 
pendence. In 1911 Italy — which had at last acquiesced 
in French possession of Tunis and approved French 
expansion in Morocco, on condition that France make no 
objection to Italian occupation of what was left to take 
east of Tunis — suddenly invaded Tripoli. A long and 
exhausting struggle was maintained by the tribesmen in 
their deserts, supported by officers from Turkey, but in 
1912 the Ottoman Government was compelled to yield its 
last African possession. These incidents were of much 
importance in the changes of these years. The German 
Government strongly disapproved of the attack on its 
friend, but could not hinder its ally. On the other hand, 
both England and France encouraged Italy and approved 




TUNIS -Turkish Dependency 1575-1871 
ALGERIA -Turkish Dependency 1519-1710 



CENERAL DBAfTlwG CO.<NC.,W< 



L i b y a\n E G Y P 

\_^ British Occupation 
\'» 7882 

D P «; P r A*" British Protectorate 
'^ ^ ^ ^ ^\ J914 



<4 



18. THE OTTOMAN DOMINIONS: GREATEST 



Kharkovo 

s s 



Greatest Extent acquired during 
"^"^"^ the Period 14ai-1683 
V//A Present Extent 




!NT, SUCCESSIVE LOSSES, PRESENT EXTENT 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 325 



her action, and it was evident that Italy would be loath 
now to offend these powers since they controlled ab- 
solutely the Mediterranean, and only with their good will 
could Italy keep her new possession. But more than that, 
the annexation of Bosnia and the seizure of Tripoli opened 
a new era, which led directly to the Great War. Since 
1878 it had been a recognized axiom in European politics 
that in Turkey and the Balkans lay the great danger 
of Europe, and that any changes there were apt to be 
fraught with the utmost hazard. It was for this reason 
that Turkey had been allowed to die slowly, with the 
Great Powers fearing to meddle, lest quarrels arise and 
conflict begin. But Austria had broken a European treaty 
and Italy had dared to make war on Turkey, regardless of 
the effects so long feared, and they had taken what they 
desired. The example was speedily followed. 

In Turkey the old evils of misgovernment continued. 
The Turks had been brave and admirable soldiers, and 
under favorable circumstances they had revealed a char- 
acter pleasant and with noble traits. But they had never 
mastered the art of organizing and governing well. They 
were often tricked and deceived by their subjects; and in 
last recourse their method was usually nothing more than 
to employ dull, stupid, and brutal force, and with the 
greatest cruelty compel submission. In the country left 
to them outside Constantinople their subjects were still 
oppressed with ruinous and ancient taxes, held as Inferiors, 
and treated with contempt. In the western district, the 
mountainous country of Albania, Turkish authority was 
defied; but in Macedonia and Thrace the people groaned 
under grievous misrule. The people of Macedonia were 
Servians, Greeks, and Bulgars, mingled together. They 
often looked with longing eyes to their brethren in Servia, 
Greece, and Bulgaria, over the borders; and always the 
governments of these countries, especially Bulgaria, looked 
forward to the day when, on the dissolution of Turkey, 



Conse- 
quences of 
the seizure 
of Tripoli 



The Turks, 
Macedonia, 
and the 
Balkan 
States 



326 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Disaffection 
and intrigue 
in Mace- 
donia 



Causes of 
the First 
Balkan War, 
1912 



these populations would be incorporated in the greater 
Balkan states of the future. Ceaselessly agents from 
over the border tried to stir up the Christians of the Turk- 
ish country to be ready for the day of deliverance, and al- 
ways they tried to prepare the way for the incorporation 
of as many of them as possible in their respective countries, 
Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece. These three little nations 
hated with a great hatred the Turk, who had once op- 
pressed their fathers, but so acute had their own rivalries 
become that in the earlier years of the twentieth century 
they hated one another still more. It was accordingly 
an extraordinary diplomatic triumph and a surprise to the 
rest of Europe, when, after secret negotiations early in 
1912, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, and Greece con- 
cluded an arrangement by which they agreed to act to- 
gether. This agreement, it is believed, was largely the 
work of the Greek statesman, Venizelos. 

In 1908 the Ottoman Government had been overthrown 
by a revolution. The new leaders, the Young Turks, 
strove to reform the administration and restore the vigor 
and power of the State. Actually, in the end it seemed 
that they did more harm than good. They soon under- 
took a policy of nationalization, attempting to assimilate 
their various subjects. So they withdrew privileges from 
the Christian peoples in Macedonia, and began bringing 
Mohammedans in. This led to disorder, massacre, and 
reprisal. The Balkan States desired that this should 
come to an end. Apparently at first they did not wish to 
go to war; but public opinion drove them forward. In 
the autumn the Turks concentrated some of their best 
troops north of Adrianople for maneuvers, and immedi- 
ately the four Balkan States issued simultaneous orders 
for mobilization, after which the Turks ordered mobiliza- 
tion next day. It was evident that the little states of the 
peninsula, encouraged by the example of Italy, were 
really willing to go to war. The Great Powers in much 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 327 



alarm endeavored now, too late, to prevent a conflict. 
October 8 they issued a note in which they condemned 
any act leading to war, and stated that if nevertheless a 
war did break out "they will not admit, at the end of the 
conflict, any modification in the territorial status quo in 
European Turkey." But Montenegro immediately de- 
clared war, and her representative is reported to have said 
that the Balkan States did not fear the Great Powers. 
October 14, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece presented 
an ultimatum to Turkey, and the next day fighting began. 
Such was the beginning of the First Balkan War. 

This contest gave almost as great a surprise as had the 
Franco-German War. Turkey was known to be in the later 
stages of decay, but the Turks had always been brave 
and steady fighters, and, weak though their state might be, 
it was supposed that their army, organized and trained 
by Germany, was still in fair shape, and it was believed to 
be superior to any military force which the Balkan States 
could assemble. But the four Balkan armies moved for- 
ward at once, and struck a series of terrible blows by which 
the power of Turkey in Europe was ruined. The little 
Montenegrin army advanced to the southward and laid 
siege to Scutari. The Servians defeated the Turks in the 
great battle of Kumanovo, overran part of Macedonia, 
presently captured a large Turkish force in the strong- 
hold of Monastir, and even crossed Albania and reached 
the Adriatic at Durazzo, The Greeks at once got control 
of the iEgean Sea, the task that had been assigned them, 
and, in addition, moved their army rapidly forward, push- 
ing the Turks back and driving some of them into the 
fortress of Janina and some into the seaport of Salonica. 

Meanwhile, greater deeds were being done by the Bul- 
gars. To them had been assigned the task of holding the 
main Turkish forces in Thrace. At once they moved 
down upon the principal fortress, Adrianople, sacred m 
the eyes of the Turks, and key to the Thracian plain. 



The Balkan 
allies victori- 
ous 



Great vic- 
tories of the 
Bulgars 



328 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The London 
Conference 



End of the 
First Balkan 
War 



The Treaty 
of London, 
1913 



Near by they encountered a Turkish army, which was 
defeated at Kirk-IGlisse, and driven from the field in total 
rout. A week later they destroyed the military power of 
the Turks in a greater and more desperate battle at Liile 
Burgas. Thrace was now cleared, and the Bulgarians, 
moving swiftly on in triumph, were stopped only by the 
fortifications of the Tchataldja lines, which protect Con- 
stantinople, and had in days of need long before stayed 
other invaders from the north. Here the Bulgars were 
halted. 

The general result was that within six weeks Turkish 
power in Europe had been destroyed. The Turks had 
been defeated in the principal battles and had lost com- 
mand of the sea. The relics of their forces had been 
driven down upon Constantinople or were hopelessly shut 
up in the beleaguered fortresses of Adrianople, Scutari, 
and Janina. The Turks asked for an armistice, and a 
peace conference assembled in London. 

This conference between the Turks and their foes was 
soon broken off, and at the beginning of February hostili- 
ties were again begun. The Bulgarian troops at Tcha- 
taldja were not able to force the Turkish lines and take 
Constantinople, but no more were the Turks able to 
drive them away. Meanwhile, the Greeks took Janina, 
and the Bulgars Adrianople. The Great Powers had al- 
ready proposed mediation, and April 19 an armistice was 
signed. At the end of May a treaty was made whereby 
an Albania was to be constituted by the powers, and the 
Turks were to keep a small district outside of Constanti- 
nople; otherwise what had belonged to Turkey in Europe 
was to go to the victorious Balkan states. This would 
probably meet the wishes of Greece and Bulgaria, provided 
they could agree among themselves, but it debarred Servia 
and Montenegro from getting a great part of what they 
had expected, on the shores of the Adriatic, in Albania. 
Servia yielded, because of the injunctions of the Great 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 329 

Powers and because she hoped for compensation else- 
where; but Montenegro, bent on having possession of 
Scutari, continued the siege of that mountain stronghold, 
and, defying the wishes of the powers, after prodigies of 
valor her soldiers took it. Presently, however, the threats 
of the powers compelled her to give it up again. 

A second Balkan war soon followed. This struggle 
was directly the result of the decision of the powers not to 
permit Servia, Montenegro, or Greece to take territory in 
Albania, and this had been done because of the insistence 
of Austria that an Albania should be maintained. It had 
in the first place seemed almost inconceivable that the 
Balkan states with their bitter rivalries would be able to 
act in alliance, but they had carefully agreed beforehand 
what each one should have, provided they defeated 
Turkey, and it is possible that if there had been no inter- 
ference they might have divided the spoils without fight- 
ing. Now that it was forbidden to touch Albanian terri- 
tory, however, Servia demanded that the agreement of 
1912 be revised so that she would have compensation 
elsewhere. A week later this was refused. Savage fight- 
ing had already broken out between Bulgarians and 
Servians and Greeks. At the end of June, suddenly, with- 
out any declaration of war, the Bulgarian armies attacked 
the Servian and the Greek forces, and a few days later 
Montenegro, Servia, and Greece declared war on Bul- 
garia, so recently their ally. 

It is probable that Bulgaria had been encouraged by 
the Teutonic powers to resist the Servian request, and it 
is certain that they expected her to win an easy victory, 
just as they had expected a Turkish triumph the preceding 
autumn. But again they were grievously mistaken. 
Neither the Greeks nor the Serbs were overwhelmed, 
but began driving the Bulgars back before them. 
While this struggle was being waged, with inconceivable 
atrocities on both sides, the doom of Bulgaria was sealed 



The Second 
Balkan War, 
1913 



Bulgaria 
crushed 




19. THE BALKANS IN 1913 
330 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 331 



by the sudden action of the Rumanian Government. 
Rumania had just seen all the Balkan states except herself 
make large gains in territory and power. She now sud- 
denly demanded that Bulgaria cede her a strip of terri- 
tory on her southern border. When this was refused the 
powerful Rumanian army was moved down upon the 
Bulgarian capital while the Greeks and the Serbs were 
advancing from other sides. Nor was this all. The 
Turks, seeing the difficulty in which Bulgaria was, re- 
occupied Adrianople. All hope was at an end, and the king 
of Bulgaria threw himself upon the mercy of his foes. 

In August the stern Treaty of Bucharest was imposed, 
by which Bulgaria lost most of what her great victories 
had gained from the Turks ; Rumania took that which she 
had demanded; and Servia and Greece got the territories 
which they had taken in the First Balkan War, while 
Bulgaria was engaging the main Turkish forces. It was 
said at the time that this treaty would lead to other wars 
in the future. Bulgaria was left greatly weakened, but 
also burning with a sense of wrong and evidently waiting 
for the day when she might strike a blow at Rumania, or 
Servia, or Greece, to have revenge, and get back the terri- 
tory which they had taken, in which, indeed, a large part 
of the population was Bulgarian. Little mercy was 
shown her, but she herself had cynically refused any gene- 
rosity in the brief moment of her greatness. 

The result of the two Balkan wars was that to Turkey 
in Europe there was left only Constantinople and a small 
area of territory northward. Steadily the state sank 
lower and lower into feebleness, decrepitude, and ruin, 
while foreign capitalists and diplomatic agents came in to 
intrigue and control. Turkey had drifted away from the 
old friendship with Britain and became more and more 
dependent on the Germans. Early in the Great War 
she was brought into the struggle to aid Germany almost 
like a vassal state. 



The Treaty 
of Bucharest, 
1913 



The relics of 
the Ottoman 
state 



332 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Montenegro Of the Balkan countries the oldest was Montenegro, 

whose hardy population of rude mountaineers had never 
been entirely conquered even when the Turkish dominions 
extended far to the north of their district. Her bold war- 
riors carried on constant war with the Turks, supporting 
themselves by their herds and their flocks, by rude tillage, 
and by forage for plunder, as the Scottish highlanders once 
had done. Her complete independence was formally 
acknowledged by the Treaty of San Stefano and by the 
Congress of Berlin in 1878. The people were Serbs, 
closely related to the population of Servia. Because 
of the conditions of their life only slight material progress 
was possible. Owing to the good offices of England 
an outlet was procured for them in 1880 on the Adriatic, 
at Dulcigno. The government was in theory a constitu- 
tional monarchy, but actually the prince was a patriarch 
and leader of a tribal people. 

Next in age was Servia, who attained autonomous gov- 
ernment in 1817, this autonomy being recognized more for- 
mally in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829. Her freedom 
came after a long contest with the Turks. In 1804 the 
struggle was begun by a peasant leader, Kara (Black) 
George, the father of Servian independence. After suc- 
cessful guerilla warfare in the mountains he completely 
overwhelmed the Turks at Mischoz in 1806. For a few 
years the Turks granted virtual autonomy, but when 
Russia, the patron of the Balkan Slavs, was occupied in 
the great struggle with Napoleon, the sultan again re- 
duced the country. Presently, however, the Servians 
rose under another peasant leader, Milosh Obrenovitch, 
and Russia being free to intervene again, the sultan 
yielded once more. 
Rival The circumstances of the Servian war of liberation were 

dynasties unfortunate in that freedom was won through the efforts 

of two leaders, both of whose families now desired to rule 
the country. The result was that the country was torn 



Servia, 1817, 
1878 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 333 



by family and dynastic disputes much like the feuds of 
Irish princes in the Middle Ages. In a country of peas- 
ants, where tribal instincts were still very strong, it 
would, in any event, have been difficult to avoid this. 
In 1817 Kara George was assassinated so that the Obre- 
novitch family might rule. This was avenged in 1868 
when Michael III was assassinated by partisans of the 
Karageorgevitch house, and in 1903 when they murdered 
Alexander and his queen. The Obrenovitch dynasty was 
now extinct, and the throne came finally into the posses- 
sion of the House of Kara George. 

In foreign relations Servia long remained dependent on 
Austria, with whom she made an alliance in 1881. Austria 
supported and protected her in her rash war with Bulgaria 
in 1886, in which she was badly defeated at Slivnitsa. But 
at the Congress of Berlin, eight years before, Austria- 
Hungary had been given the administration of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, in which dwelt a large part of the Servian 
race. As time went on Servia greatly hoped some day 
to obtain these provinces for herself. Accordingly, the 
friendship with Austria gradually cooled, and Servia, 
getting more and more under Russian influence, strove to 
free herself from economic dependence on her neighbor 
to the north. In 1908, when Bosnia and Herzegovina 
were annexed by the Dual Monarchy, and the last chance 
of Servia acquiring them seemed to have gone, the Ser- 
vians were filled with the rage of despair, and apparently 
hoped to be able to fight against Austria along with Russia 
as an ally. When Russia yielded to Austria and Germany 
together it seemed for a moment that Servia would strike 
by herself, but she also yielded and was compelled to 
accept what had been done. In 1912 she helped to form 
the Balkan Alliance which dismembered Turkey. She 
overcame all opposition and even obtained the long-desired 
outlet on the sea, at Durazzo. But Austria-Hungary, 
unwilling that Servia should grow great or have a 



Servia, 
Austria- 
Hungary, 
and Russia 



Servia in 
the Balkan 
wars 



334 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

port on the Adriatic, compelled her to withdraw from 
Albania. She did, indeed, at this time yield to Servia the 
sanjak (province) of Novi-Bazar, which lay between 
Servia and Montenegro, and which she had undertaken 
to administer when she got possession of Bosnia. But the 
Serbs, deprived of the fruits of their victory, turned for 
compensation to the east, and this helped to bring on 
the Second Balkan War. In this struggle Servia and 
Greece defeated Bulgaria, and, as a result of the Treaty 
of Bucharest, Servia, although terribly weakened, was 
left with greatly increased possessions and prestige. In 
1915, during the Great War, she was destroyed by her 
enemies, but part of her army escaped and afterward 
assisted the Allies in their final triumph. As a result 
of this war Servia became the leader of a great federation 
of South Slavs, based upon the eastern Adriatic Sea. 
Domestic The domestic history of the country records the long, 

affairs g}ow rise of the peasants to better economic conditions. 

The principal occupations of the people were agriculture 
and the raising of cattle. Generally speaking, the land 
was in the hands of small peasant proprietors, who lived a 
rude, hard life, but enjoyed more economic independence 
than most of the peasants outside of France, and of Ireland 
after the Land Purchase Acts. The government was 
vested in a prince, until 1882, when the title of king was 
assumed. There was a legislature, the Skupshtina, and 
for some years before the war a considerable measure of 
constitutional self-government had been developing. The 
religion of the people is the Greek Catholic faith. 
Greece, For ages the fate of Greece has been closely associated 

1829-1832 with that of Turkey and the Balkans. The Greeks ob- 
tained their freedom in 1829, about the time that the Serbs 
won theirs. When Turkey had abandoned her claims, there 
was some delay about fixing the status of the country. Rus- 
sia desired that Servia should have self-government but re- 
main tributary to the sultan; but since it was believed that 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 335 



this would make her really dependent on Russia, Austria 
and England opposed it. Metternich was unwilling for 
any assistance to be given to the Greeks ; he greatly wished 
to prevent the break-up of the Ottoman dominions, and 
hence some part of the existing arrangement in Europe; 
but since that had already occurred, he joined England 
in helping to establish Greece as a sovereign and indepen- 
dent state. This was done in 1832 as the result of an in- 
ternational conference in London. 

In her foreign relations Greece was generally fortunate. 
England and France occupied Piraeus in 1856 to prevent 
Greece attacking Turkey during the Crimean War; but in 
1862 the British Government gave her the Ionian Islands, 
which lay just off the west coast, and which England had 
acquired during the Napoleonic wars. By the Congress of 
Berlin the northern boundaries of Greece were extended, 
and five years later, after some pressure by the powers, 
she received parts of Thessaly and Epirus. In 1897, 
during a rebellion in the large Greek-inhabited island of 
Crete, Greece declared war on Turkey, but was at once 
overwhelmed and would have lost some of her territory 
in the north but for prompt intervention by the powers. 
None the less, the Cretans, who had repeatedly risen in 
rebellions since the time of the Greek War of Indepen- 
dence, were now given autonomy under Turkey. In 
1905, under their leader, Venizelos, the ablest Greek of his 
generation, they declared for union with Greece, and five 
years later the Treaty of London, at the end of the First 
Balkan War, brought this about. In the First Balkan War 
the Greeks got command of the sea, and occupied such 
islands in the ^Egean as Italy had not taken the year be- 
fore, and, defeating the Turkish armies opposed to them, 
got the long-coveted city of Salonica. In the second war, 
she helped Servia to defeat Bulgaria, and kept what she 
had won. In the Great War Venizelos would have had 
her join the Allies, but the sympathy of the sovereign was 



Foreign 
relations 



Greece in 
the Balkan 
wars 



336 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Domestic 
affairs 



Rumania, 
1829-61-78 



with Germany, and for a long time Greece remained neu- 
tral. The Allies presently occupied Salonica, and in 1917 a 
revolution drove Kjng Constantine out, whereupon Greece 
entered the war with England and France. In 1920, 
during the settlement of European affairs, by the Treaty 
of Sevres, Greece received considerable portions of Turk- 
ish territory along the ^gean and up beyond Adrianople, 
and also in Asia Minor. 

The domestic history of the country during this period 
has no great general interest. The people are descended 
from the ancient Hellenes, though their forefathers 
mingled with the Slavic intruders who came into the 
peninsula in the early Middle Ages. Their language is a 
modification of the Greek spoken by the countrymen of 
Aristotle and Pericles. Indeed, modern Greek is much 
more like the Greek of classical times than modern English 
is like Anglo-Saxon. The people belong to the Greek 
Catholic Church. The government is a constitutional 
monarchy. The people have continued the traditions 
of old Greece and developed much commerce and ship- 
ping, but the country is poor and opportunity small, and 
large numbers of emigrants have left the homeland. The 
new possessions of Greece together with the advantages 
of her geographical position will probably bring much 
greater prosperity and expansion in the future. 

Rumania dates from about the time when Greece was 
established. By the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829 the 
two Danubian principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, 
were left under the nominal sovereignty of the sultan, but 
actually autonomous and largely dependent on Russia, 
who had gained them their freedom. Russian control 
of the country, which commanded the mouths of the 
Danube, awakened the jealousy of Austria, and in 1856 
at the Congress of Paris the principalities were formally 
declared autonomous states under Turkish suzerainty and 
the Russian protectorate abolished. At the same time 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 337 



Bessarabia, formerly an eastern part of Moldavia, lying 
across the Danube, and taken by Russia from Turkey in 
1812, was joined to Moldavia once more. The constitu- 
ent assemblies now called, in the two provinces, declared 
for union in one state; but this was opposed by England 
who feared Russia, and by Austria who wanted no strong 
Rumanian state right on the border of her province of 
Transylvania which was peopled by Rumans. None the 
less, the people of the two principalities proceeded to 
elect the same prince, Alexander Couza, and supported 
by Napoleon III, who shortly afterward made war 
upon Austria to assist Italian nationality, they were 
united. The union was sanctioned by Turkey in 1861. 
The great reforms which Couza undertook raised enemies 
who drove him from his throne five years later. He was 
succeeded by a German prince, Charles of Hohenzollern- 
Sigmaringen, in whose long reign the country went for- 
ward in development and progress. 

With Russia Rumania made war upon Turkey in 1877, 
and her soldiers won great distinction; but she gained 
nothing; for, in the settlement that followed, Russia took 
back Bessarabia and gave the less valuable Dobrudja 
to the south, which had just been taken from Turkey. 
But the complete independence of Rumania was recog- 
nized by the Treaty of Berlin, and in 1881 her ruler as- 
sumed the title of king. Rumania took no part in the 
First Balkan War, but intervened decisively in the Second, 
and by the Treaty of Bucharest obtained a small portion of 
Bulgarian territory. During the Great War, like Italy 
and Greece, Rumania maintained neutrality for some time, 
but in 1916 joined the Allies. After a brief struggle she 
was overwhelmed, and presently forced to make an 
ignominious peace and see her country stripped bare. Two 
years later, however, her enemies were completely over- 
thrown, and in the general settlement of European affairs, 
in Paris, she obtained what she had so long hoped for : Tran- 



The 

Danubian 
Principali- 
ties autono- 
mous 



Foreign 
affairs 



338 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Domestic 
a£falrs 



Agrarian 
reforms 



sylvania, Romania Irredenta, and proceeded to take back 
Bessarabia also. 

The domestic history of the country reveals steady 
development and increase in material prosperity. Even 
before her latest acquisitions Rumania was the largest 
and most populous of the Balkan States; she was rich in 
resources, one of the great wheat- and oil-producing dis- 
tricts of Europe, and she had a trade almost as great as 
that of all the other Balkan States combined. After the 
Treaty of St. Germain (1919) and the taking of Bes- 
sarabia her size was nearly doubled, and she became 
greater and more important than her neighbors, Austria, 
Hungary, or any of the Balkan States. Rumania was 
free from the uprisings and violent overturns that inter- 
fered with the development of neighboring states. Con- 
stitutional monarchy was established but a restricted 
franchise kept control in the hands of the upper classes. 
Under their prince, Alexander (1859-1866), a series of 
notable reforms was made ; the property of the monaster- 
ies was confiscated, and part of the holdings of the great 
landowners was sold to the peasants, who at the same 
time were relieved of the more onerous of the feudal or 
manorial obligations. These changes, which were carried 
through just about the time when Alexander II was mak- 
ing his great reform for the Russian serfs, partly failed in 
the end largely for the same reasons as in Russia. The 
amount of land given to the peasants was small, and since 
the population increased rapidly, after a while the amount 
was altogether insufficient. Furthermore, some of the 
feudal obligations were left upon the peasants, such ob- 
ligations lingering in Rumania longer than anywhere 
else in Europe. The result was that while the wealth 
and prosperity of the country increased, it was largely for 
the upper classes. The mass of the people were poor, 
and agrarian discontent was very great. During the 
period of the Great War, however, large estates were 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 339 



divided among the peasants, and universal suffrage was 
granted. The people claim descent from Roman colonists 
of the time of Trajan, and their language is an offspring of 
the Latin ; but most of the people are Slavic, and most of 
them adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church. 

Youngest of the Balkan States was Bulgaria. The 
Bulgars, like the Serbs, have a long history. Both 
of them were formidable enemies of the Eastern Roman 
Empire in the days of the Empire's decline, and both 
founded great states in the Balkan peninsula during the 
Middle Ages. Both of them were afterward overwhelmed 
by the Turks, and spent long ages in dumb and hopeless 
subjection. Because of their rivalry and their disputes 
the Turks found it easy to conquer them and afterward 
play them off against each other. 

In 1876, following the uprising of the people of Herze- 
govina, Bulgarian peasants rose against their Turkish 
masters. The revolt was easily suppressed, but it was 
suppressed with such cruelty that all Europe was 
aroused. The "Bulgarian Atrocities," as the massacres 
were called, awakened a storm of indignation in Europe. 
In 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey. She was moved 
partly by ambition to extend her influence toward Con- 
stantinople, but she was aroused also because of the 
sincere sympathy of the Russian people for their kinsmen 
in the midst of the horrors which they were enduring. 
Joined by Rumania, she quickly destroyed Turkey's 
power, and by the Treaty of San Stefano stripped her of 
nearly all her possessions in Europe. This territory was 
mostly given to a new Bulgarian state, autonomous 
though tributary to the sultan, which would now have 
been the most powerful state in the Balkans. But 
this arrangement was not allowed to stand. The entire 
Balkan question was soon dealt with by a European 
congress which met at Berlin. By the Treaty of Berlin 
in 1878 the Bulgarian country was divided into three 



The Bulgars 



Bulgaria, 
1878 



340 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

parts, the southernmost, Macedonia, which contained 
many Bulgarians, was left to the Turks; the middle part. 
Eastern Rumelia, was made an autonomous province 
under a Christian governor, but was to be under the direct 
authority of Turkey in mihtary and political matters; 
the northern part was made into the autonomous prin- 
cipality of Bulgaria tributary to the sultan. Part of this 
enforced division of the Bulgarian people was soon undone. 
In 1885 Eastern Rumelia joined Bulgaria. Greece and 
Servia were unwilling to see their new rival strengthened, 
and Servia suddenly attacked her. But the Bulgars 
completely defeated their enemies at Slivnitsa, and the 
union was then assured. 
The King- The first ruler of the country was a German, Prince 

domof Alexander of Battenberg, but after a troublous reign of 

foo8^^^^' seven years he withdrew from the country. Presently 

another German, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, was 
chosen. For some years the country was directed by 
the one great statesman whom Bulgaria has produced, 
Stephen Stambulov, in whose time Bulgaria threw off the 
tutelage of Russia and made herself truly independent. 
The young nation constantly grew in strength and pres- 
tige, and in 1908, at the time when Austria annexed the 
two Turkish provinces, the Bulgarian prince cast off 
all Turkish allegiance and proclaimed the independent 
Kingdom of Bulgaria. 
Misfortune Four years later Bulgaria was the principal member in 

in war ^j^g Balkan coalition which destroyed Turkish power, and 

after her armies had everywhere gained great triumphs 
she found herself in possession of the province of Thrace 
down beyond Adrianople. But in the next year, unwilling 
to compromise with her allies, she attacked Servia and 
Greece. She did not succeed in defeating them, and 
while they were driving her back the Rumanians suddenly 
came down from the north, while the Turks took back 
Adrianople. Bulgaria was forced to make abject sub- 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 341 



mission, and by the Treaty of Bucharest yielded some of 
her own territory to Rumania, and lost nearly all she had 
gained in the First Balkan War. It was partly to get 
revenge and partly to undo the settlement of Bucharest 
that the Bulgarians joined the Teutonic powers in 1915 and 
helped to destroy first Servia then Rumania. But in 
1918 she was the first to surrender to the Allies, and the 
war left her poverty-stricken, ruined, and bare. 

The origin of the Bulgarians is not certainly known. 
Like the JNIagyars and the Finns they are apparently 
Asiatic intruders in Europe, but they are much mixed 
with Slavic people, and speak a Slavic language. Their 
religion is the Greek Catholic, but they have an inde- 
pendent church, the Bulgarian Exarchate. The prin- 
cipal industry is agriculture, and the Bulgars constitute 
a state of small, sturdy, free, independent peasant pro- 
prietors. The government is a constitutional monarchy, 
under a king and a parliament, the Sobranje, elected by 
the people. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Austria-Hungary, general: H. W. Steed, W. A, Phillips, and 
D. A. Hannay, Short History of Austria-Hungary and Poland 
(1914) ; H. W. Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy (2d ed. 1914), best, 
by the Vienna correspondent of the London Times; J. A. von 
Helfert, Geschichte Oesterreichs von Ausgange des Wiener October 
Ausstandes 18^8, 4 vols. (1869-86), the best work on the period. 

Biographies and memoirs: E. von Wertheimer, Graf Julius 
Andrassy, 3 vols. (1910-13); F. F. von Beust, Aus Drei Viertel- 
jahrhunderten, 2 vols. (1887). 

The parts of the Dual Monarchy: Bertrand Auerbach, Les 
Races et les Natio7ialitis en Autriche-Hongrie (1898); A. R. and 
Mrs. E. M. C. Colquhon, The Whirlpool of Europe, Austria- 
Hungary and the Hapsburgs (1907) ; Geoffrey Drage, Austria- 
Hungary (1909); R. W. Seton-Watson, Racial Problems in 
Hungary (1908), Corruptioti and Reform in Hungary (1911), 
The Southern Slav Question and the Hapsburg Monarchy (1911), 
excellent; Josef Ulrieh, Das Oesterreichische Staatsrecht (3d ed. 
1904), best on the subject; Alexandre de Bertha, La Hongrie 



The Treaty 
of Bucharest 



Bulgaria a 

peasant 

state 



342 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

Moderne, 1849-1901 (1901), La Constitution Hongroise (1898); 
R. Sieghart, Zolltrennung und Zolleinheit (1915), for the economic 
relations between Austria and Hungary; E. Denis, La Boheme 
depuis la Montagne- Blanche, 2 vols (1903). 

Austria-Hungary and the Balkans: A. Beer, Die Orientalische 
Politik Oesterreichs seii 17H (1883); T. von Sosnosky, Die 
BalJcanpolitik Osterreich-Ungarns seii 1866, 2 vols. (1913); A. 
Fournier, Wie Wir zu Bosnien Kamen (1909); D, S. Koyitch, 
L' Annexion de la Bosnie-Herzegovine et le Droit International 
Public (1912); Ferdinand Schmid, Bosnien und die Herzegovina 
unter der Verwaltung Oesterreich-Ungarns (1914). 

The Ottoman Empire: W. Miller, The Ottoman Empire, 1801- 
1913 (1913), for a good introductory account; W. E. D. Allen, 
The Turks in Europe (1919); B. G. Baker, The Passing of the 
Turkish Empire in Europe (1913); B. Bareilles, Les Turcs, Ce 
Que Fut Leur Empire, Leurs ComSdies Politiques (1917); V, Be- 
rard, Le Sultan, VIslam, et les Puissances (1907); W. E. Curtis, 
The Turk and His Lost Provinces (1903); S. Goriainov, Le Bos- 
phore et les Dardanelles (1910), based on studies in the Russian 
archives; A. Vicomte de la Jonquiere, Histoire de V Empire Otto- 
man, 2 vols, (3d ed. 1914), the second volume contains the fullest 
account of Turkey since 1870; "Odysseus" [Sir C. N. E. Eliot], 
Turkey in Europe (1908), excellent and suggestive; R. Pinon, 
VEurope et VEmpire Ottoman (1913). For accounts of life in 
Constantinople: H. S. Edwards, 8ir W. White, Ambassador at 
Constantinople, 1885-1891 (1908); Sir E. Pears, Fortij Years 
in Constantinople (1916), excellent, Life of Abdul Hamid (1917). 
For the Turkish revolution: G. F. Abbott, Turkey in Trans- 
ition (1909); C. R. Buxton, Turkey in Revolution (1909). 

The Eastern Question : Edouard Driault, La Question d' Orient 
depuis Ses Origines jusqua Nos Jours (1898, 7th ed. 1917), best; 
Die Balkanfrage, ed. by M. J. Bonn (1914); M. Choublier, La 
Question d'Orient depuis le Traiti de Berlin (1897); S. P. H. 
Duggan, The Eastern Question — a Study in Diplomacy (1902) ; T. 
E. Holland, The European Concert in the Eastern Question (1885) ; 
J. A. R. Marriott, The Eastern Question (1917) ; M. I. Newbegin, 
Geographical Aspects of Balkan Problems in Their Relation to 
the Great European War (1915); R. Wyon, The Balkans from 
Within (1904) ; R, W. Seton-Watson, The Balkans, Italy, and 
the Adriatic (1915). 

The Balkan Wars: V. B6rard, La Macedmne (2d ed. 1900) 
H. M. Brailsford, Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future (1906) 
Andr6 Cheradame, Douze Ans de Propagande, 1900-1912 (1913) 



AUSTRIA, TURKEY, BALKANS 343 

L. E. Gueschoff, U Alliance Balkanique (1915), trans. The Bal- 
kan League (1915), contains important documents and first- 
hand information; G. Young, Nationalism and War in the Near 
East (1915). For the military operations: J. G. Schurman, 
The Balkan Wars, 1912^1913 (1914); Report of the International 
Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan 
Wars (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1914); 
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, With the Turks in Thrace (1913); 
Hermengild Wagner, With the Victorious Bulgars (1913); D. J. 
Cassavetti, Hellas and the Balkan Wars (1914); K. Nicolaides, 
Griechenlands Anteil an den Balkankriegen, 1912-13 (1914). 

Greece: Sir R. C. Jebb, Modern Greece (2d ed. 1901); Lewis 
Sergeant, Greece in the Nineteenth Century (1897); George Fin- 
lay, History of the Greek Revolution (1877), best on the subject; 
P. F. Martin, Greece of the Twentieth Century (1913); R. A. H. 
Bickford-Smith, Greece Under King George (1893) ; N. Nicolaides, 
Les Grecs et la Turquie (1910) ; C. Kerofilas, Eleutherios Venizelos 
(trans, by B. Barstow, 1915); V. E. Berard, Les Affaires de 
Crete (2d ed. 1900). 

The Balkan States : W. S. Murray, The Making of the Balkan 
States (Columbia University Studies, XXXIX, no. 1, 1910), 
scholarly; William Miller, The Balkans: Roumania, Bulgaria, 
Servia, and Montenegro (2d ed. 1908). 

Montenegro: P. Coquelle, Histoire de MontSnSgro et de la 
Bosnie depuis les Origines (1895); F. S. Stevenson, A History of 
Montenegro (1912). 

Servia: H. W. V. Temperley, History of Serbia (1917), best in 
English; V. Georgevitch, Die Serbische Frage (1909); Prince and 
Princess Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, The Servian People, Their 
Past Glory and Their Destiny, 2 vols. (1910); W. M. Petrovitch, 
Serbia, Her People, History, and Aspirations (1915) ; V. Ratchich, 
Le Royaume de Serbie: Etude d'Histoire Diplomatique (1901); 
Gregoire Yakschitch, L'Europe et la Resurrection de la Serbie, 
180J^-1834 (1907). 

Rumania: Oscar Brilliant, Roumania (1915); Nicolae Jorga, 
Geschichte des Rumdnischen Volkes, 2 vols. (1905); D. Mitrany, 
Roumania, Her History and Politics (1915); Andre Bellesort, 
La Roumanie Contemporaine (1905). 

Bulgaria: A. Chaunier, La Bulgarie (1909); Edward Dicey, 
The Peasant State: an Account of Bulgaria in 1891^ (1894) ;Guerin 
Songeon, Histoire de la Bulgarie depuis les Origines jusqud Nos 
Jours (1913); A. H. Beaman, M. Stambuloff (1895). 



CHAPTER XIII 



Rome and 
the comple- 
tion of 

Italian unity, 
1870 



ITALY, SPAIN, AND THE LESSER 
STATES 

Sono celebri le parole pronunziate da Bismarck al 1879, che I'ltalia 
non era una potenza militare temibile . . . Oggi tutto e 
mutato in nostro vantaggio ed io non permettero che I'ltalia 
ritorni in quelle state di umiliazione. • . . 

Francesco Crispi to Commendatore Ressman, September 2, 

1890. 

El partido liberal espanol, sin culpa suya, por culpa de otros, es el 
partido liberal mas avanzado que hay en toda Europa. 
Es necesario, completamente necesario, que la monarquia his- 
torica espanola se una, se confunda, se aligue con el partido de- 
mocratico historico espanol. 

Speech of Emilio Castelab, July 12, 1883. 

If this is the day of great Empires it is also preeminently the day of 
little nations. . . . Their destiny is interwoven with that of 
humanity. 

Speech of Mr. Lloyd George, September 6, 1917. 

The unification of Italy was completed with the tak- 
ing of Rome in 1870. This acquisition was one of the con- 
sequences of the Franco-German War. Napoleon HI, 
who had had so much to do with making possible the 
establishment of the Italian nation, by the help which 
he gave to Sardinia against the Austrians in 1859, had not 
expected the work to be carried as far as it was, and viewed 
with displeasure the appearance of a new great state on 
the southern border of France. Moreover, the powerful 
Catholic party in France, then very active and aggressive, 
was deeply offended at the taking by the new state of 
most of the territories of the pope in 1860. Partly to 
appease them and gain their good will, Napoleon III 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 345 



occupied Rome, still in the pope's possession, with French 
troops. Soon after the beginning of the war with the 
Germans these troops were withdrawn, Rome was occupied 
by Italian forces, and the capital of the Kingdom of 
Italy, which had first been at Turin, then in 1865 had been 
removed to Florence, was now brought to Rome. 

The government of the state was based on the Statuto 
fondamentale del RegnOy which had been granted by 
Charles Albert of Sardinia (Piedmont) to his subjects in 
1848, and later extended to the other districts as they 
were added to Sardinia to make the new kingdom. In 
course of time the Statuto, while not changed or amended, 
was enlarged and overlaid by much supplementary legisla- 
tion and with custom having the force of law. By virtue 
of this constitution Italy became a monarchy, with a 
government of the model of England or France, where 
the authority was vested in a parliament, of two houses, 
with an executive, the ministry, responsible to it. The 
franchise was at first restricted by rigid property and 
educational qualifications, so that only one person in 
forty could vote, A great extension was made in 1882, 
while in 1912 a reform was made by which manhood suf- 
frage was, in effect, introduced. 

The extending of the franchise in Italy was long de- 
layed and much hampered because of the illiteracy of a 
large part of the population, especially in the south. The 
effective working of the government was long impeded 
by the hostility of the pope. When Rome and the little 
strip of territory around it were occupied in 1870, it was 
not the purpose of the Italian Government to drive the 
pope away or to interfere with him as pope. Cavour's 
ideal had been: libera chiesa in stato libera (a free church 
in a free state) . Next year the Italian Parliament passed 
the Law of Papal Guarantees, still in force, which guaran- 
teed the pope's sovereignty, possession of the Vatican and 
other places, and a large pension in perpetuity. Pius IX 



The govern- 
ment of the 
Kingdom of 
Italy 



Vatican and 
Quirinal : 
Church and 
State in 
Italy 



346 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Prisoners of 
the Vatican 



Improve- 
ments nec- 
essary for 
union and 
progress 



refused to accept this, hoping that the lost temporal pos- 
sessions of the Church would be returned to him, and as 
late as 1914 Benedict XIV expressed hope that this would 
be brought about. The popes refused to take the pen- 
sion, and remained in voluntary isolation, "prisoners" 
in the Vatican. As the years went by and no Catholic 
power restored to the Papacy what had been lost, the 
popes tried to thwart and obstruct the Italian authorities. 
In 1883 the decree Non expedit (not expedient) declared 
it not well for Catholics to vote at parliamentary elections 
or to hold office under the Italian Government; and in 
1895 a further decree, Non licet (not allowable), proclaimed 
that the Church forbade these things. The trend of ideas 
in the nineteenth century was such that there were numer- 
ous Catholics who no longer considered it well for the 
Church to be a temporal power, who conceived its func- 
tions to be purely spiritual and ecclesiastical, and who 
therefore had no hostility toward the Italian Government 
because of the seizure of the papal states. Accordingly, 
the orders of the popes concerning Italian politics were 
by no means generally obeyed. The strongest impulse in 
Italy continued to be the fervent feeling of patriotism 
awakened during the great years of unification. The 
Catholic population was divided by a conflict between 
nationalism and the Church. Many had no hesitation in 
zealously supporting the government; many, more scrupu- 
lous and obedient, heeded the behests of the Church. 

Huge tasks confronted the new state. The effects of 
the weakness, the misery, the oppression of the centuries 
past, were not to be made up at once by any device. 
Especially in the south, so long weighed down under the 
oppressive tyranny of the Bourbons, there were old condi- 
tions surviving, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, that it 
would take much to overcome and remove. In this 
southern part there were no railroads yet, ecclesiastics 
and rulers there having long considered them to be works 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 347 



of the devil, good communications had not yet been 
opened, and manufactures were utterly wanting. In the 
north there were railroads, good communications, and 
flourishing industrial cities. In this part there was a 
sturdy body of small proprietors, among whom the lands 
had been parcelled out. In the south, especially in 
Sicily, the land was held in large estates by the nobles, as 
in Russia, and as in western Europe during the Middle 
Ages, worked by an ignorant and debased peasantry. The 
nation was poor and taxation inevitably oppressive; but 
though the south contributed least, it was necessary for a 
while that the greater part of the revenue should be spent 
there, since the country could not be truly united until 
the chief differences between the northern and the south- 
ern portions were done away with. 

Considerable development followed. New railroads 
were constructed, manufacturing extended, commerce de- 
veloped. Much of this was accomplished in the face of 
difficulties that remained very great. The principal oc- 
cupation, as in France, was agriculture, but much of the 
soil was not rich, methods of cultivation were primitive, 
the peasants in the south very backward, and the land 
there held in the manner of the Ancient Regime. It was 
difficult to develop manufactures as Great Britain and 
Germany were then doing, since Italy was almost entirely 
without iron and coal, and could obtain these essentials 
only by buying them at high price abroad. Italy had no 
large quantity of exports to send out, and it was difficult 
merely to develop carrying trade in competition with the 
great seafaring nations. From a country thus poor and 
lacking rich natural resources it was necessary to raise 
huge taxes, partly to do the necessary things long left 
undone, and partly to sustain the ambitious foreign policy 
upon which the country soon embarked. The taxation 
was so crushing as to bow down the people and hamper the 
development of business; yet for a long time almost all 



Conditions 
in Italy 



Develop- 
ment and 
progress 



Heavy 
taxation 



348 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Increase of 
population 



Italian na- 
tionalism 



Italy enters 
the Triple 
Alliance 



the public revenue thus raised was devoted to paying 
interest on the large national debt, and to paying for the 
army and the navy. Notwithstanding all these things, 
and notwithstanding that many people could barely make 
a living, the birth-rate was high and the population in- 
creased rapidly, just as it had under still worse circum- 
stances in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. In 1914 the population of Italy was almost as great 
as that of France, and nearly twice as large as that of 
Spain, though the area of each one of these countries was 
twice as great as her own. Italy, indeed, like Japan at 
the same time, was unable to support her rapidly increas- 
ing numbers. Accordingly, there was a large and in- 
creasing emigration, to the South American countries, and 
especially to the United States where myriads of Italian 
peasants became small farmers, sellers of fruit, or did the 
construction work on railways, sewers, and public im- 
provements, always hoping for the day when enough 
money would be saved to enable them to return to the 
beloved land of their birth. 

It was ardent nationalism that made possible the 
strong union which was accomplished in Italy. During 
the Middle Ages Italy had been divided into states as 
completely self-conscious and as completely distinct as 
was Germany at the same time; and these divisions had 
been maintained down into the nineteenth century. Yet 
when the unification of the country was brought about 
a centralized nation state was erected, like England or 
France, whereas in the German Empire no more than a 
federal union of the parts was effected. The people also 
were filled with recollection of the greatness of Rome in 
the past, and with desire to have Italy important in the 
present. The Italian leaders resolved to make their 
country a great power. Partly through fear of France 
and also because of anger at her course, and partly be- 
cause of previous association with Prussia, Italy joined 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 349 



the alliance which the German Empire and Austria- 
Hungary had made, and thus helped to form the Triple 
Alliance (1882). A large army and a large navy were 
now deemed necessary, and the expense of maintaining 
them not only constituted a burden beyond the real 
resources of the country, but took a great part of the public 
revenue which was sorely needed for education and inter- 
nal improvements. 

During this time, while Italy was an appendage of the 
German alliance, she felt that she had security from 
France, and set out to acquire a colonial empire. Some 
possessions were taken in eastern Africa, but when attempt 
was made to conquer the independent kingdom of Abys- 
sinia, the Italian forces suffered a crushing defeat (1896). 
For some years Italian colonial aspirations remained in 
abeyance, until in 1912, when a great change had come 
over international relations, Italy suddenly tried to take 
Tripoli away from Turkey. During this time Italy's con- 
nection with her partners had been growing weaker and 
weaker. The old fear and suspicion of France seemed 
to disappear. On the other hand, while relations with 
the German Empire remained cordial, with the Dual 
Monarchy they never became completely satisfactory. 
In 1866 Italy had joined Prussia against Austria, and 
though defeated had shared m the Prussian success. It 
was then that she had obtained Venetia, rounding out her 
possessions in the northeast. But at this time not all the 
Italian population in this part of Europe was given to 
her, a considerable portion remaining under Austrian rule 
across the Alps in the Trentino, at the head of the Adriatic 
about Trieste, and scattered along the Dalmatian shore 
of the Adriatic. Italian nationalists, fired with patriotic 
feeling, longed to bring their brethren of this Italia Ir- 
redenta into union with themselves. This could never be 
accomplished, so it seemed, until Austria-Hungary was 
defeated and conquered. Furthermore, extension of 



Foreign 
relations 



Italia 
Irredenta 



350 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Spain: the 

republic, 

1873-5 



The Bour- 
bons re- 
stored, 1875 



Austrian poWer down the eastern shore of the Adriatic al- 
ways seemed threatening to Italy, whose own Adriatic 
coast, low and defenceless, might lie helpless before the 
naval power of Austria based on the fortresses of the moun- 
tainous shore over the sea. Finally, there was in the 
twentieth century a conflict of ambition between the two, 
since both Austria-Hungary and Italy desired to extend 
their power and dominion in the Balkans. This opposition 
gradually weakened the Triple Alliance, and it was the 
principal factor in bringing Italy into the Great War 
against the Teutonic powers in 1915. 

In 1870 the people of Spain were in the midst of troub- 
lous times. During the long reign of Isabella II the 
reputation of the Bourbon dynasty had sunk lower and 
lower, until in 1868 she was driven away by a liberal 
uprising, and a provisional government was set up while 
the revolutionists sought a new monarch. It was during 
this search for a sovereign that the crown was offered to a 
relative of the king of Prussia, thus causing the tension 
between Prussia and France, the immediate occasion of the 
Franco-German War. In 1871 Amadeo of Savoy accepted 
the throne, but after two years in the midst of dishearten- 
ing difficulties he abandoned his attempt to rule the 
country. In 1873 the liberals set up a republic. This was 
contrary to the wishes of most of the people, and Spain now 
fell into the greatest confusion. Order was restored only by 
the stern rule and the military despotism of the president, 
Emilio Castelar. In 1875 the Bourbon line was restored 
when the son of Isabella was made king as Alfonso XII. 
During the ensuing reign order was maintained and the af- 
fairs of the state were administered by the conservatives 
with wisdom and success. On the death of the monarch 
in 1885, and after the birth of his posthumous son, Alfonso 
XIII, in the following year, the government was adminis- 
tered under the regency of the Queen Mother, Maria 
Christina, who turned to the liberals. In 1902 the young 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 351 



king came of age. His personal qualities endeared him to 
his subjects, and despite great difficulties the dynasty still 
keeps a hold upon the throne, though the tenure has be- 
come more precarious each year. 

Most of the Spanish people had cared nothing for a 
republic when Castelar was trying to establish one, and 
the nation welcomed back a king with as much delight 
as the English once received Charles II. A period of 
improvement and reform began, which slowly produced 
good results. In 1876 a constitution was adopted which 
in form gave the people a government like that of Italy or 
Belgium, vested in the cortes, or parliament, elected by the 
people. In 1890 the principle of manhood suffrage was 
adopted for electing members of the lower house of the 
Cortes. As in Great "Britain the ministry is dependent 
upon a majority in the parliament, and as in France this 
majority is formed by a combination of political parties 
willing to act together. But actually the Spanish people, 
for ages without experience in self-government, cared 
little about their government and were utterly unable to 
control it. Parliamentary majorities were made by the 
ministry, and a government could always get sanction 
from the electorate by controlling the elections. More- 
over, the extension of the suffrage in 1890 to the mass of 
the people strengthened the conservative and reactionary 
elements in the state, especially the Church, since the 
voters, many of whom were illiterate as well as inex- 
perienced, voted entirely at the dictation of the priests. 
Nevertheless, after 1880 a period of reform began, in 
which trial by jury was introduced, taxation reformed, and 
obstacles removed from industry and trade, obstacles 
that had survived in Spain longer than almost anywhere 
else in Europe. The liberal leader, Sagasta, wished also 
to improve education and take it out of the hands of the 
clergy, and effect such a separation of Church and State as 
was afterward brought about in France: but, notwith- 



The govern- 
ment 



Reforms 



352 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Recent 
conditions 



Portugal : 
past great- 
ness and 
present 
decay 



standing that there was considerable hostihty to the 
reHgious orders because of their vast wealth and posses- 
sions, the body of the people supported the clericals and 
enabled them almost entirely to prevent such changes. 

After three centuries of decline and decadence there 
were immense obstacles in the way of recovery, and the 
loss from those centuries was not easily to be made up. 
The country was poor, agriculture languished, there was 
little industry and not much trade. No longer did great 
quantities of gold come from colonies, for most of them 
had long ago been lost, and those which remained were a 
burden and expense. Most of the people were ignorant 
and superstitious, and more than half of them could neither 
read nor write. Taxation was heavy and the national debt 
almost too great to be borne. None the less, gradually 
there has been an improvement in the last generation. 
What appeared at first a great disaster, the loss of most 
of the remaining Spanish colonies to the United States 
in 1898, soon seemed a benefit, since it removed much 
trouble and expense. Of late the population has been 
increasing, and wealth and prosperity along with it. The 
land has been getting more and more into the hands of 
peasant proprietors, and manufacturing and commerce 
have once more begun to flourish. The country remains 
poor, and in the midst of their splendid cathedrals and 
vast palaces the people have memories of the past more 
than possessions in the present. Nevertheless, Spain, 
once the land of the Inquisition, of autos dafe, of proud 
noblemen, of innumerable beggars, is coming to be a land 
of some industry and prosperity, and may have a large 
future before her. 

Portugal, like Spain, had played her part long before 
the beginning of the nineteenth century, and, like Spain, 
the best of her heritage in 1870 consisted of glorious memo- 
ries from the past. For her also the nineteenth century 
had been a period of weakness, quietude, and decay. After 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 353 



the Napoleonic wars and after the withdrawal of the 
British troops who had occupied the country, Portugal was 
the scene of struggles between parties of progress and re- 
action. No great advance was made and not much was 
possible, for the country had no large national wealth 
and no great industries or trade. Its finances were 
hopelessly tangled, taxes were very high, and the debt of 
the nation was large. Brazil had proclaimed her inde- 
pendence in 1822, but Portugal still possessed a colonial 
empire, mostly in Africa, much beyond her resources to 
maintain. As time went on her debt increased and her 
affairs became more embarrassed. It was not possible to 
improve education or economic conditions, and most of the 
people remained poor and illiterate, with small under- 
standing of political matters and no previous experience 
in self-government. So the Portuguese people, in their 
out-of-the-way corner of Europe, lived on in the decay of 
their country, in the midst of monuments of departed 
grandeur, attracting little foreign attention, except when 
other countries, like Germany or England, hoped some day 
to inherit their colonial possessions. It is believed that 
in 1898 Great Britain and Germany did make a secret 
agreement about how these possessions might be divided 
between them later on, if ever Portugal could be per- 
suaded to sell. 

In 1910, when the reigning dynasty had sunk into 
complete disrepute, Manoel II, young, inexperienced , and 
foolish, was driven from the throne and a republic pro- 
claimed. A constitution modelled on that of France was 
adopted, providing for a legislature, the Cortes, with a minis- 
try responsible to it, and a president. But it was evident 
at once that it would take generations of education 
and training in self-government before the Portuguese 
people could make it work successfully; and the new gov- 
ernment had to sustain itself by force and by many of 
the arbitrary methods of imprisonment and suppression 



Economic 
stagnation 



The Por- 
tuguese Re- 
public, 1910 



354 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Greatness 
of the Dutch 
Netherlands 
in the past 



Decline 



which had made the monarchy odious. Furthermore, 
there were violent disputes between the clericals and 
friends of the republic, for notwithstanding that the entire 
population was Roman Catholic, the republican govern- 
ment at once proceeded to separate Church from State, 
suppress the wealthy religious orders, and confiscate what 
they owned. It would probably be long before the settle- 
ment was complete. 

The history of Holland in the nineteenth century was 
mostly a record of quiet prosperity and of solid achieve- 
ment by a nation once great but now for a long time small 
in the midst of mightier neighbors. When after a pro- 
longed and desperate struggle during the sixteenth century 
the Dutch succeeded in winning their independence from 
the Spanish crown, they had become the greatest sea power 
in Europe. It was their ships and their command of the 
sea, more than anything else, that had given them their 
triumph ; and not only had they come through the contest 
successfully,but they had obtained an extensive colonial em- 
pire in the Far East, and become the greatest commercial 
nation as well. During the earlier years of the seventeenth 
century they had a great part of the carrying trade of 
Europe in their hands, and they so developed the herring 
fisheries of the North Sea that the waters yielded them 
greater wealth than Spain got from her mines in Peru. 

But England now began to rise up as a great commercial 
power. Her geographical position was more favorable 
than that of the Dutch, since she lay across the routes 
by which the Dutch reached the outside world, and could, 
if she desired, always close them. Sea wars followed, 
resulting largely from commercial and colonial competi- 
tion, in which the Dutch failed to hold their own. Worse 
still, they were exposed to attacks from France, then, 
under Louis XIV, the greatest and most aggressive mili- 
tary power in Europe, and they were not, like England, 
protected by the sea. The Dutch did save themselves, 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 355 



and afterward, together with England, they checked the 
aggressions of France. But by 1713, when this was 
achieved, they were exhausted by a task which had been 
beyond their strength, and whereas in the seventeenth 
century they were one of the principal European powers, 
in the eighteenth they sank to the second class and no 
longer played a great part. Like Spain, the United Nether- 
lands, even in this period of decline, continued to pos- 
sess large colonial dominion, mostly in the Far East; but 
unlike the Spaniards, the Dutch continued to be, what 
they had been from the first, industrious and successful 
workers. They played a lesser part because neighboring 
powers had grown far greater and more rapidly than them- 
selves, so that relatively they were less than before. 

During the wars of the French Revolution the Dutch 
Netherlands were overrun like others countries near by; 
and in 1810 they were annexed directly to France. But 
when Napoleon's power was crumbling, the Dutch pro- 
claimed their freedom and made themselves a kingdom 
under William I, son of the last stadtholder who had ruled 
before the Frenchmen came. When the Congress of 
Vienna was doing its work, the leaders determined to 
strengthen Holland against possible aggression from 
France in the future, and in 1815 what had before the 
French Revolution been the Austrian Netherlands, and 
before that the Spanish, was joined to the new Dutch 
kingdom, the united territories being known as the King- 
dom of the Netherlands. 

This union was not destined to last. The people of the 
Dutch Netherlands were mostly Protestant and Germanic, 
while the population of the Belgic provinces was Catholic 
and part of it had derived its culture from France. The 
Belgian population was more numerous than the Dutch, 
but while Belgium was compelled to contribute the larger 
part of the taxation, the offices and power in the govern- 
ment were reserved for Dutch officials. William I was 



The King- 
dom of the 
Netherlands 



Separation 
of Belgium 
from Hol- 
land 



356 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Holland in 
the nine- 
teenth cen- 
tury 



very conservative; he offended the Hberals, and he further 
outraged the feelings of his Belgian subjects by trying to 
impose on them Dutch language and laws. When in 
1830 the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown in France 
by a revolution in Paris, the Belgians rose against their 
masters, and demanded a separate legislature. William 
refused any concessions, so they proclaimed their complete 
independence. The Dutch people, inflamed by strong 
national feeling, supported their monarch, and he might 
have reconquered the rebels had it not been that England 
and France intervened. Thus Belgium won her independ- 
ence; and, so different were the two peoples in character, 
aspirations, and ideals, that it was probably best that the 
separation took place. 

The political history of Holland in the nineteenth 
century was uneventful. The Dutch, with many proud 
memories from the past, were intensely conscious of their 
nationality, and passionately resolved to keep their inde- 
pendence. They had no great love for England, who had 
once beaten them in great trade wars and taken from them 
some of their colonial possessions; but in the past France 
had been the great enemy, and then they had only been 
saved by assistance from Britain. During the nineteenth 
century these conditions no longer existed, but at the be- 
ginning of the twentieth, a danger that had long been 
looming up appeared more threatening. The most am- 
bitious German leaders were thought to look forward to a 
day when the German Empire would be greater, and when 
it would include possessions which they thought should 
properly belong to it but which were not yet within the 
Empire. Some German writers asserted that the Dutch 
were closely related to the Germans, that of right they 
should enter a Germanic federal union, and that Holland, 
lying across the mouths of Germany's great river, the 
Rhine, ought to be brought into such union. More and 
more did the Dutch dread incorporation with their power- 




20. A\ 




N 1800 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 357 



ful neighbor, and the loss of independent existence. In 
1890 Queen Wilhelmina, a girl of ten, came to the throne, 
and for a while her subjects feared that there would be no 
heir to the crown and that, the dynasty dying out, their 
country might lose its independence. After the birth of 
an heir, however, this fear abated; though the Dutch 
continued to guard with great jealousy against any in- 
fringement of their freedom. After the beginning of the 
Great War they guarded their neutrality likewise. 

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Nether- 
lands lost some of their colonies to England, and as a 
result of the Napoleonic wars, Ceylon and South Africa 
also. Nevertheless, they continued to retain one of the 
wealthiest of colonial empires, especially in the Spice 
Islands off southeast Asia. This empire, lucrative and 
important, was until recently administered without 
great consideration for the welfare and advancement of 
the natives, primarily in the interests of Holland. 

The Dutch governing classes were conservative and 
very tenacious in upholding the system established, so 
that constitutional change was made more slowly than in 
neighboring countries, and throughout the nineteenth 
century constitutional progress lagged behind what was 
accomplished in Great Britain or France. In 1848, when 
the revolutionary movements were overturning so much 
in Europe, the Dutch Ejng, William II, quietly and wisely, 
though against his own wishes, granted a more liberal 
constitution, which with slight changes satisfied his people 
thereafter. The ministry now became responsible to the 
States General, the Dutch Parliament, though the repre- 
sentatives in the lower chamber were still elected by a 
small number of voters. In the later part of the nine- 
teenth century, in 1887 and in 1896, the franchise was 
extended to a larger number of voters, but as late as 1914 
more than a third of the men were not yet permitted to 
vote. 



The Dutch 

colonial 

dominions 



The govern- 
ment of 
HoUand 



358 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Belgium in 
the past 



Decline of 
prosperity 



The history of the Belgian people is a long record of 
prosperity and misfortune. In the Middle Ages they had 
the most thriving industry in Europe, and splendid guild 
halls and bell towers still attest the magnificence of that 
era. But the country was also a debatable land, between 
Germany and France, the road for attack by one on the 
other, and therefore the battleground in many wars now 
long forgotten. For a long time the sovereigns of France 
strove to add these provinces to their dominions, as they 
built up the kingdom of France; but they got only part 
of what they tried for, since England in the fourteenth 
century, as in the sixteenth and the seventeenth and the 
nineteenth and the twentieth, dreaded to see the country 
right across the narrow waters from her, and almost at the 
mouth of the estuary of the Thames, in the hands of some 
powerful rival. The Belgian provinces joined the other 
Netherlands in the revolt against Philip II, but the popu- 
lation, being almost entirely Roman Catholic, accepted 
the overtures of Spain, and in 1579 abandoned the contest. 
Under the languishing rule of Spain, and afterward under 
the ineffective administration of Austria, these provinces 
suffered decline. By the Treaty of Miinster the port of 
Antwerp was closed, so that its commerce was ruined, in 
order to promote the interests of Holland. During the* 
Revolutionary period the Austrian Netherlands were 
easily occupied by the French and presently annexed to 
France. This annexation of Belgium and the opening 
of the port of Antwerp had much to do with the unyielding 
opposition of Great Britain to the Revolutionary govern- 
ments and to Napoleon. After the destruction of the 
French Empire Austria resigned her Belgian possessions, 
since they were too distant to be easily defended, and in 
exchange for them she took territory in the north part of 
Italy. Belgium was then added to the Dutch Nether- 
lands, partly to make a strong state on the French frontier, 
partly to compensate Holland for the colonies she had lost 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 359 



to England. For fifteen years the Belgian people endured 
a union which they disliked, a union that was made 
burdensome and oppressive by the Dutch rulers. In 1830 
they rebelled, and, by the assistance of Great Britain and 
France, they got their independence. 

In 1831 Belgium was established as a state independent 
and perpetually neutral; and when in 1839 Holland at 
last accepted Belgian independence, this provision was 
again confirmed by the five great powers : Austria, France, 
Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia. Thus Belgium was 
made a neutralized state as Switzerland had been in 1815. 
The country now went forward with its development in 
safety. Shortly before the Franco-German War, it is true. 
Napoleon III entered into secret negotiations with Prus- 
sia, apparently in hope that he might be able to add Bel- 
gium to France; but this came to nothing. When later, 
in 1870, Bismarck revealed the proposal, the British 
Government at once made treaties with France and with 
Prussia respectively, engaging to join forces with either 
one if the other violated Belgian neutrality. 

After 1831 the little country experienced a great in- 
dustrial development, its population and its prosperity 
increasing. Unlike Holland, which remained an agricul- 
tural and commercial country, Belgium possessed great 
resources of coal and iron, and became one of the great 
industrial regions of Europe. The constitution, which 
had been adopted in 1831, was the most liberal at the time 
in continental Europe. As in Great Britain the ministry 
was responsible to a parliament. As elsewhere then the 
franchise was narrow, being allowed only to those who 
paid a considerable tax. In 1848 it was extended a little, 
but thereafter for nearly half a century no change was 
made. Meanwhile, great industrial populations had been 
assembled in the cities, and after the franchise had been 
widely extended in all the neighboring countries still in 
Belgium only one man m ten could vote. Therefore, at 



The neu- 
tralization 
of Belgium 



Economic 
and political 
progress 



360 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Swiss 
cantons in 
the past 



Disunion 
and stronger 
union 



last in 1893, the labor leaders called a general strike, and 
the legislature, soon yielding, provided for manhood suf- 
frage, though with double votes or even triple votes to men 
of property and at the head of a family or with unusual 
educational attainments or experience in public office. 
The result of this extension of the franchise, as in Spain, 
was to give much greater power to the clergy, who con- 
trolled the Catholic voters. 

The history of Switzerland during this period is a record 
of prosperous peace. Some of the Swiss, in the midst of 
their mountains, won their freedom from Austria in the 
Middle Ages, and joined together in a confederation. 
After first defending themselves successfully, they pres- 
ently became renowned as the best mercenary soldiers in 
Europe, fighting in most of the great wars for pay. The 
government was a federation of smaller units, or cantons. 
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Switzerland 
and the United Provinces (Holland) were the only two 
important republics in the world. They were also two of 
the principal places of refuge for the oppressed and those 
who desired freedom of thought. During the French 
Revolution Switzerland was first penetrated by the new 
ideas and then overrun by French soldiers, and in 1798 
the Helvetic Republic was established. During the Na- 
poleonic period other cantons were added, and still more 
were joined to the Confederation in 1815 when the 
Congress of Vienna reestablished it and guaranteed its 
neutrality. The cantons remained, as they had been for a 
long time before the French Revolution, united in a loose 
confederacy, each with complete local autonomy, much 
as were the American commonwealths before the adoption 
of the Constitution of the United States. 

In the first half of the nineteenth century the cantons, 
which had so long remained in partnership, developed a 
division which, after a while, threatened to disrupt the 
Confederation. Some of the cantons were Catholic and 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 361 



agricultural and were under clerical influence; others 
were Protestant, they contained large cities, and in 1830 
they liberalized their governments and tended toward 
newer ideas. Thus Switzerland, like the United States 
of America about the same time, was split into two parts, 
in which the people had different ideals and purpose, and 
seemed unwilling to continue in the old association. In 
1840 the radical party triumphed in an election in Aargau. 
The clericals revolted, and when they were suppressed 
their opponents proceeded to dissolve the monasteries 
of the canton. Then in 1843 the Roman Catholic cantons 
formed a Sonderbund, or separate league, to protect clerical 
interests wherever they should be attacked. This was 
much like the establishment of the Southern Confederacy 
in America in 1861. In 1847 the federal diet of the 
Confederation ordered the Sonderbund to dissolve. In 
the contest that followed the separatist movement was 
crushed. The triumphant party now remodelled the con- 
stitution, and what had before been a loose confederation 
became a federal republic, with a constitution something 
like that of the United States. By this constitution of 
1848 a federal assembly of two houses was established : an 
upper house, the Council of States, consisting of two 
delegates from each canton, chosen by the legislature of 
the canton; the lower house, the National Council, con- 
sisting of representatives elected by voters in electoral 
districts, all adult males having the franchise. The 
executive was vested in a Federal Council of seven mem- 
bers and a president, chosen by the Federal Assembly. 
The cantons, like the states of the American Union, had 
their own constitutions and governments. 

Thereafter the Swiss people went on in remarkable 
progress and prosperity. They continued, as for a long 
time before, to show that it was possible for men of differ- 
ent races and religions to live side by side under the same 
government, each having large measure of freedom, un- 



The Sonder- 
bund 



Progress 
and develop- 
ment in self- 
government 



362 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Refer- 
endum 



The 

Initiative 



The Scandi- 
navian 
countries 
in the past 



molested by the others. Most of the population was 
German, but considerable portions were French and 
Italian. Some were Protestants and some were Catholics. 
There was no attempt to enforce uniformity of language 
or customs, as in Russia and Austria-Hungary, but so 
much freedom was left to all that the Swiss Confederation 
was reckoned to be the most successful democracy in the 
world. And while its people perfected their educational 
system until their schools were as good as any in Europe, 
and while they were developing great industrial prosperity, 
they continued to teach other nations the art of self- 
government. In attempting to work out devices by 
which the people might more directly control their govern- 
ment they perfected the Referendum and originated the 
Initiative. The Referendum, or referring back for popular 
vote measures already passed by the legislature, had been 
employed by some of the American States in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, and afterward was put into 
one of the provisions of the French Revolutionary Con- 
stitution of the Year I; but its use was extended by the 
Swiss Constitution of 1848 and it has since been frequently 
employed. The Initiative, by which legislation or an 
amendment is brought forward by petition of a certain 
number of voters, was introduced in Switzerland, then 
•established in their constitution of 1848, and since widely 
extended there. Both these devices were afterward copied 
in the constitutions of some of the commonwealths of the 
United States. 

The Scandinavian countries, during most of their 
career, were outside the great currents of European af- 
fairs, though twice they greatly affected neighboring 
countries. In the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, 
sailors and pirates from Norway and Denmark spread 
terror of the Northmen's name all over western Europe, 
and some of them established themselves on the shores of 
the Mediterranean Sea. The Danes ravaged Ireland, and 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 363 



conquered England for a while; the Northmen sailed to 
Iceland, Greenland, and even Vineland or America, and 
established themselves in Normandy (northern France) 
and afterward in southern Italy. Meanwhile, bands of 
Swedes entered Russia. After these great Scandinavian 
wanderings came to an end, for a long time the northern 
peoples affected the rest of Europe but little, for neither 
their population nor their resources made it possible for 
them to take a great part among wealthy and powerful 
peoples. In 1397 the three countries were loosely united 
under the headship of Denmark, but from this union Swed- 
en broke away in 1523, and presently rose to a position of 
considerable greatness. Her zenith was reached during the 
seventeenth century. When central Europe was torn to 
pieces by the religious struggles of the Thirty Years War, 
and when the fortunes of Protestantism were at their 
lowest ebb, Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, became 
the Protestant champion, and, bringing to Germany an 
army of zealous soldiers with a powerful train of artillery, 
he won great battles and saved Protestantism from the 
Counter-Reformation. He also established the greatness 
of his country, for the settlement made after his death in 
1648 left the shores of the Baltic under Swedish control. 
But during the eighteenth century greater neighbors, 
like Russia and Prussia, rose up against her, and Sweden's 
resources were hopelessly wasted in vain struggles to keep 
her outlying possessions. At the time of the French 
Revolution Scandinavian greatness was definitely past. 
By 1814 Denmark, to which Norway w^as still joined, was 
an unimportant country, and Sweden had lost her pos- 
sessions outside the Scandinavian peninsula. In each of 
these countries the Lutheran faith was the religion of al- 
most all of the people. 

From Denmark the Congress of Vienna took Norway 
and joined it to Sweden. In 1814 the Norwegian people 
declared their country a sovereign state. They yielded. 



The great- 
ness of 
Sweden 



Sweden and 
Norway 



364 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Different 
circum- 
stances in 
the two 
countries 



Foreign 
relations 



however, to the Great Powers, and the two countries were 
loosely joined, each having its own constitution, but the 
two being united under one king. This arrangement 
lasted throughout the nineteenth century, because of the 
moderation and prudence of the rulers, but the interests 
of the two peoples were incompatible and divergent. 
The Swedish kings always desired to make their state 
stronger by bringing about a closer union of the two coun- 
tries, and having the two peoples cherish the same inter- 
ests in common ; the people of Norway, with different ideas 
and desires, wished that there were no union at all, and 
strove to have it made looser. Sweden was larger and 
more populous, but while there was more wealth in the 
country, wealth and power were concentrated in the 
hands of nobles and aristocracy, leaving the mass of the 
people without property or political power. The govern- 
ment was vested entirely in the hands of the king, checked, 
when at all, only by an assembly of estates, something 
like those which had disappeared in England and Spain 
long before, and like those which had been resurrected in 
France in 1789. In Norway, while the resources of the 
country were little and the soil was poor, the land had 
become divided among a large number of small farmers, 
there was much democratic feeling, and the constitution 
adopted in 1814 put the government in the hands of a 
Storthing or legislature, in which the representatives were 
elected by voters whose franchise depended upon a low 
property qualification. In the nineteenth century the 
Industrial Revolution gradually became important in 
Sweden, and then manufacturing was added to her agri- 
culture. In Norway commerce was developed until the 
Norwegian merchant marine was the fourth largest in the 
world. In foreign relations Norway was drawn more and 
more toward England and France, while Sweden, resent- 
ing the Russian seizure of Finland, and always fearing 
further Russian expansion toward the sea, more and 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 365 



more imitated Germany's methods and sympathized with 
her purpose and desires. 

So the two peoples drew ever further apart. In 1863 
a Swedish constitution was granted, with a parhament 
hke those of western Europe, but great power was 
left to the king and also to the wealthy upper classes. 
Meanwhile, Norway became increasingly liberal and 
democratic. In 1884 manhood suffrage was established. 
In 1901 she gave the municipal franchise to women tax- 
payers, and six years later followed this by granting the 
parliamentary franchise to women and allowing them to 
sit in the Storthing. Moreover, in Norway a great literary 
national revival was carried on, so that the people became 
more conscious of their nationality and more eager for 
complete independence. For a long time they insisted 
that they should have a separate flag, and particularly 
that their immense shipping entitled them to appoint 
their own consuls abroad. Sweden refused to allow this, 
and great tension arose, though, because of restraint and 
moderation on both sides, there was never a resort to 
arms. Finally, in 1905, the Storthing declared the inde- 
pendence of Norway. The Swedes, more powerful though 
they were, wisely decided not to try to force their neigh- 
bors back into a distasteful allegiance of no use to them- 
selves, and so they acceded to the separation, A Danish 
prince was invited to be king, but the monarchy was as 
limited and as democratic as in England. In 1907 Great 
Britain, France, Germany, and Russia signed a treaty 
with Norwegian representatives guaranteeing the integrity 
and also the neutrality of Norway. Good relations be- 
tween the two Scandinavian countries were soon resumed, 
despite the fact that some resentment lingered in Sweden. 
The two countries, accordingly, proceeded peaceably on 
their separate ways. 

During all this time Denmark had gradually become 
the least important of the northern nations. Norway 



Separation 
of Norway 
from 
Sweden 



The inde- 
pendence of 
Norway, 
1905 



Denmark 



366 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Loss of 

Schleswig- 

Holstein 



Government 



The 
franchise 



had been taken from her in 1814; Schleswig-Holstein, 
containing some Danish population, had been lost in 1864. 
Across the base of the Jutland peninsula, which had pre- 
viously been hers, the great German Kiel Canal was cut, 
and through it went ships that would formerly have gone 
around through the Danish channels. She still had Ice- 
land and Greenland, far away and unimportant, and a few 
islands in the West Indies, which finally she sold to the 
United States. Furthermore, her territory seemed to some 
of the ambitious German pleaders to be properly a German 
outpost like Holland or Belgium. In 1905 the German 
emperor told the tsar that, in the event of war with 
England, Russia and Germany should occupy Denmark; 
and increasingly the people of the country lived under the 
shadow of their neighbor to the south. Meanwhile, in 
Denmark, as in Norway and in Sweden, democracy and 
constitutional government made progress, though much 
less rapidly than among the Norwegians. In 1849 a 
constitution was granted, establishing a parliament or 
Rigsdag, but actually government remained in the hands 
of the king and the upper class, and the ministry was not 
responsible to representatives of the people any more than 
it was in Prussia. Indeed, in the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century money was frequently collected as a result 
of royal decree, and not because appropriation was made 
by the Folkething or lower chamber. But the people de- 
veloped their intensive agriculture and their dairy farming 
and established a remarkably successful system of co- 
operative enterprise, by which middlemen were largely 
eliminated, and so far improved their economic position 
that they really became more and more important. Ac- 
cordingly, in 1901 the king granted what he knew they 
desired, that the ministry should be dependent upon the 
majority elected to the Folkething by the people. By the 
constitution of 1849, which was revised in 1866, the fran- 
chise was given to men who were householders and not 



ITALY, SPAIN, LESSER STATES 367 

dependent upon charity, who were thirty years of age or Extension of 
more. In 1915 the suffrage was granted to all men twenty- *^® franchise 
five years old and upward, and also to most of the women. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Italy: E. Bourgeois and E. Clermont, Rome el Na'poleon III 
(1907); R. Cadorna, La Liberazione di Roma nelVAnno 1870 
(1889); L. Cappeletti, Storia di Vittorio Emmanuele II, 3 vols. 
(1893); Francesco Crispi, Politica Estera; Memorie e Docu- 
menti, ed. by T. Palamenghi-Crispi (1914); Memoirs of Francesco 
Crispi, 3 vols. (1912-14) ; G. S. Godkin, Life of Victor Emmanuel 
II, 2 vols. (1879); Italia e Jugoslavia (1918); consisting of essays 
by various Italian and South Slav writers, in moderate spirit; 
Ernest Lemonon, Ultalie Economique et Sociale, 1861-1912 
(1913); Bolton King and Thomas Okey, Italy To-day (2d ed. 
1909) ; G. Massari, La Vita ed il Regno di Vittorio Emanuele Ily 
2 vols. (1901); P. L. Orsi, U Italia Moderna (2d ed. 1902); A. 
Pingaud, Ultalie depuis 1870 (1915); A. Pougeois, Histoire de 
Pie IX et de Son Pontifical, 6 vols. (1877-88); W. K. Wallace, 
Greater Italy (1917). 

Spain: Don Rafael Altamira, Hisioria de Espana, 4 vols. 
(1900-11); J. L. M. Curry, Constitutional Government in Spain 
(1899); Discursos Parlamentarios y Politicos de Emilio Caslelar, 
4 vols, (no date), for many aspects of Spanish life and govern- 
ment from the point of view of the great liberal and republican 
leader; Yves Guyot, L' Evolution Politique et Sociale de VEspagne 
(1899); David Hannay, Don Emilio Caslelar (1896); Angel 
Marvaud, La Question Sociale en Espagne (1910), VEspagne 
an XX' Siecle (1913) ; J. W. Root, Spain and Its Colonies (1898) ; 
E. H. Strobel, The Spanish Revolution, 1868-1875 (1898); H. 
R. Whitehouse, The Sacrifice of a Throne (1897), best for the 
reign of Amadeo of Savoy; H. W. Wilson, The Doivnfall of Spain 
(1900), concerning the Spanish-American War. 

Portugal: Gustav Diercks, Das Moderne Portugal (1913); 
A. Marvaud, Le Portugal el Ses Colonies (1912) ; H. M. Stephens, 
Portugal {\SQ\). 

Holland: excepting books written in Dutch there are fewer 
books about modern Holland than the other small countries 
of Europe. There is, however, a work of the highest excellence: 
P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van hel Nederlandsche Volk, 4 vols. 
(2d ed. 1912-15), trans, by Ruth Putnam and others, History of 



368 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

the People of the Netherlands, 5 vols. (1898—1912), the later chap- 
ters concerning the recent period. Clive Day, The Policy 
and Administration of the Dutch in Java (1904), excellent. 

Belgium: J. Barthelemy, L' Organisation du Suffrage et V Ex- 
perience Beige (1912), best on Belgian political institutions; 
L. Bertrand, Uopold II et Son Regne, 1865-1890 (1890), Histoire 
de la DSmocratie et du Socialisme en Belgique depuis 1830, 2 vols. 
(1907), from the socialist point of view; Leon Dupriez, V Organi- 
sation du Suffrage Universel en Belgique (1901), R. C. K. Ensor, 
Belgium (1915) ; Leon van der Essen, A Short History of Belgium 
(1916); J. de C. MacDonnell, King Leopold II, His Ride in 
Belgium and the Congo (1905), Catholic; M. Wilmotte, La 
Belgique Morale et Politique, 1830-1890 (1902). 

Switzerland: F. O. Adams and C. D, Cunningham, The Swiss 
Confederation (1889) ; Karl Dandlicher, trans, by E. Salisbury, 
A Short History of Switzerland (1899); W. H. Dawson, Social 
Sioitzerland (1897); H. D. Lloyd and J. A. Hobson, A Sovereign 
People; a Study of Swiss Democracy (1907); I. B. Richman, 
Appenzell, Pure Democracy and Pastoral Life in Inner Rhoden 
(1895); Paul Seippel, editor. La Suisse au Dixneuvieme Siecle, 
3 vols. (1899-1901), the most important work on the subject, 
by a group of Swiss writers. 

The Scandinavian countries: R. N. Bain, Scandinavia, a 
Political History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, from 1513 to 
1900 (1905); Povl Drachmann, The Industrial Development and 
Commercial Policies of the Three Scandinavian Countries (1915). 

Norway: A. A. F. Aall, Die Norwegisch-Swedische Union, Ihr 
Bestehen und Ihr Losung (1912) ; H. H. Boyesen, The History of 
Norway (1896); Knut Gjerset, History of the Norwegian People, 
2 vols. (1915); L. Jordan, La Separation de la Suede et de la 
Norvege (1906); Fridtjof Nansen, Norway and the Union with 
Sweden (1905), from the Norwegian point of view. 

Sweden: P. Fahlbeck, La Constitution SuMoise et le Parle- 
mentarisme Moderne (1905); A. Mohn, La Suede et la Revolu- 
tion NorvSgienne (1905); Sweden, Its People and Industries, 
published by order of the Swedish government, edited by Gustav 
Sundbarg (1904). 

Denmark: J. Carlsen, H. Olrik, and C. N. Starke, Le Dane- 
march (1900); H. Weitemeyer, Denmark (1891). 



CHAPTER XIV 

COLONIES AND IMPERIAL 
EXPANSION 

God of our fathers, known of old. 

Lord of our far-flung battle-line. 
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold 

Dominion over palm and pine — 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. 
Lest we forget — lest we forget! 

RuDYARD Kipling, "Recessional" (1897) 

If Germany becomes a Colonizing Power, all I can say is "God speed 
her." She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of a 
great purpose of Providence for the benefit of mankind, and I hail 
her entrance upon that operation, and gladly shall I hope that she 
will become associated with us in carrying the light of civilization, 
and the blessings that depend thereon, among the more backward, 
and, as yet, less significant regions of the world. 

Gladstone, in the House of Commons, March 12, 1885. 

The latter half of the nineteenth century was strik- 
ingly marked by a great movement, which had, indeed, 
been going on for some hundreds of years : the extending 
of the power of European governments and the expansion 
of their peoples into other parts of the world. If in the 
second half of the nineteenth century the process was 
more rapid than ever before, this was mostly because 
some of the European powers had become stronger and 
more capable of great undertakings and because the world 
was relatively smaller through new means of communica- 
tion: telegraph, steamship, and railroad. The principal 
motives continued, as in the earher times, to be desire for 
new sources of raw materials and wealth, the hope which 
individuals had of making their fortune, and the belief 
that acquiring colonies would render the mother country 

369 



The 

expansion 
of Europe 
and Euro- 
pean power 



370 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Europe 
much less 
important 
in the past 



richer and stronger and greater. As the Virginia Com- 
pany of London and the Dutch East India Company had 
carried colonists and power to America or Asia in the 
seventeenth century, so in the nineteenth did the Associa- 
tion of the Congo and the British South Africa Company 
acquire great African dominions. As in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries England and France aspired to 
get colonial possessions from which they might have 
assured supply of naval stores and raw materials, so in the 
nineteenth and twentieth was it the highest ambition of 
the German Empire to possess colonies containing copper, 
cotton, and rubber. And as Great Britain in the time 
of George II and George III wished America to buy British 
manufactures and supply business for the British ships, 
so did France and Germany now hope that they might 
build up colonial empires to assure them of a market for 
the sale of the goods which they made. 

Few things are more wonderful than this expansion of 
European people and power into America, Asia, and 
Africa in the past four hundred years, and nothing better 
reveals the primacy which Europe has acquired. Only a 
small part of the land of the earth is in Europe, and only a 
small part of its population formerly lived there. In early 
times the north shore of Africa, with Egypt and Carthage, 
was more important than southern Europe with Greece 
and Rome. From far-away times Asia rightly seemed 
the center of the world and the cradle of civilization. 
Then western culture was only beginning in the valley of 
the Tigris and Euphrates and in Africa in the valley of the 
Nile. At that time dim in the distance and scarcely known 
were the teeming myriads of old India, and farther remote 
the vast numbers and immobile character of immemorial 
China. Later on, to the wealthy and cultured upper 
classes of Hindustan and Persia, Europe must have seemed 
small and sparsely peopled and unimportant, on the dim 
frontier of the world. Presently the Roman Empire was 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



371 



built up in southern Europe, but after a while this Empire 
passed. During all this time and long after, the great 
American continents lay hidden beyond their ocean, al- 
most unpeopled, and, to the rest of the world, unsuspected 
and unknown, unless sometimes faintly imagined as At- 
lantis or Ultima Thule. 

During the past four hundred years a vast change has 
come over the world. Asia, whose people as late as the 
thirteenth century threatened to overrun Europe, long 
ago lost her superiority, and Europe going forward with 
immense acceleration, has gained unquestioned primacy 
in culture and power. First she discovered and appro- 
priated the Americas, then parts of Asia, then almost 
all of Africa also. By the beginning of the twentieth 
century European people and their rule had gone forth 
into all the four quarters of the world. America North 
and South had been occupied by England, France, Portu- 
gal, and Spain, and notwithstanding that most of this 
western world was now divided into independent states, 
yet the language and culture of Europe predominated al- 
most completely. In Asia all the northern half had been 
taken by Russia, and Russian power was being steadily 
pushed to the southward; India had long been imder 
the rule of Englishmen, the great islands off its southeast 
coast had been colonized or mastered by the English and 
the Dutch; and France had obtained valuable possessions. 
Africa, whose immense interior had until the nineteenth 
century been largely unknown and mostly unexplored, 
had now been penetrated from all sides, and with the 
exception of the kingdom of Abyssinia and the republic 
of Liberia, completely occupied by European powers. 

The greatest though not the oldest of these colonial 
empires was the British. At the end of the nineteenth 
century it contained 13,000,000 square miles of territory, 
more than a fourth of the landed surface of the earth, and 
425,000,000 people. While England was still unimportant 



European 
people now 
dominate the 
world 



The 

British 

Empire 



372 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Beginning 
of English 
colonization 



Increase by 
conquest 



in Europe, Portugal had found the first sea routes to the 
east and founded a wealthy empire and trade, and about 
the same time Spain had taken the Americas and built up 
a huge empire beyond the Atlantic. But the Dutch soon 
took the best of the Portuguese possessions and founded 
their own colonial empire in the Spice Islands of the East, 
and after a period of stagnation and decay the Spanish 
colonies in America broke their connection with the mother 
country and completely established their independence. 
Meanwhile, England, starting a hundred years later than 
these rivals, had slowly and without any settled design 
been building up a widespread dominion. As early as 
1583 she established a claim to Newfoundland, the center 
of the wondrous new American fisheries. In the early 
years of the seventeenth century she carried forward her 
settlements and acquisitions in America. She took pos- 
session of some of the smaller islands of the West Indies, 
and presently, in 1655, the more important island of 
Jamaica. During this same period she began the estab- 
lishment of her colonies on the mainland, and in the years 
from 1607, when Virginia was founded, to 1733, when 
Georgia was established, she obtained the best part of the 
Atlantic coast of North America. Meanwhile, in 1638, 
she had taken Honduras in Central America. In the first 
half of the seventeenth century also she obtained a footing 
in Africa at Gambia and on the Gold Coast, and in 1651 the 
little island off the west African coast, St. Helena, after- 
ward so renowned. Meanwhile, in Hindustan the English 
East India Company was establishing forts and factories 
that were the forerunners of an Indian empire. 

Down to the end of the seventeenth century the English 
colonies were largely the result of settlement or explora- 
tion, and most of them lay in North America. In the 
eighteenth century Britain greatly extended her holdings 
as the result of successful wars, mostly at the expense of 
France. In 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succes- 




!55 

o 



§1 

m 

O 

Ji s 
S "^ 

CO 









l^ 



1; 1-. 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



373 



sion, she seized Gibraltar, then the gateway to the Mediter- Gibraltar 

ranean, which ever since she has kept; while in 1713, by the 

Treaty of Utrecht, which brought the struggle to an end, 

she got from France New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the 

outposts of Canada, and undisputed title to the territory 

of Hudson Bay. In 1763, by the Peace of Paris, which 

ended the Seven Years War between England and France, 

she got from France the remainder of Canada, what is 

now Prince Edward Island, Ontario, and Quebec, as well 

as important islands in the West Indies; and at the same 

time the supremacy of the British in India was confirmed. 

A little later she took the Falkland Islands not far east of 

the southern extremity of South America, memorable 

for a sea battle long after. Now, however, came the 

great disaster in the history of the British Empire : in 1775 

the Thirteen Colonies on the mainland of North America 

rebelled, and by 1783 had won the acknowledgment of 

their independence. 

It seemed then that an irreparable loss had been sus- Further 
tained; and in truth not only had the most precious pos- growth 
sessions of Britain over the seas been lost, but nothing 
afterward obtained could be compared to the United 
States in value. It seemed to some of the British leaders 
then a mistake to establish colonies, since the best of 
of them cut themselves away as soon as they could, and 
the others were not worth the trouble and expense of 
holding. None the less, development of the British colo- 
nial empire soon went rapidly forward again. In 1786 
a beginning was made of obtaining the Straits Settlements, 
situated by the great trade routes that run past south- 
east Asia, and near to the world's greatest supply of tin. 
In 1788 in New South Wales began the occupation of 
Australia, largest of all the islands, indeed a continent 
itself. During the wars of the French Revolution 



m 



and with Napoleon, British control of the sea was at no 
time shaken, and new colonial acquisitions were made, at 



374 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Acquisitions 
from France 
and from 
Holland 



Egypt 



the expense of France, or of Holland under French control. 
Thus it was that Ceylon, south of India, was taken in 1795, 
Trinidad, off the north coast of South America, two years 
later, and Cape Colony in 1806, all from the Dutch; and 
Britain kept them when the affairs of Europe were settled 
at the Congress of Vienna, Holland getting Belgium as 
compensation. In addition she got other West India 
Islands from France, also Malta, one of the principal keys 
of the Mediterranean, and Helgoland, once owned by 
Denmark, destined later to be the impregnable German 
fortress guarding Germany's North Sea coast. Mean- 
while, the servants of the East India Company had ex- 
tended the Company's sway over a vast territory and 
population in India, and in 1858, after the suppression of 
the Indian Mutiny, the Company's powers were trans- 
ferred to the British Crown, the country becoming the 
greatest domain of the Empire. During the first half of the 
nineteenth century also, while the United States was 
growing across the middle of North America to the Pacific, 
Great Britain extended her possessions in Canada to the 
Pacific, and, except for Alaska, got possession of all North 
America from the United States to the Arctic. In 1878, 
at the Congress of Berlin, in return for support against 
Russia, Turkey ceded to Great Britain the island of Cy- 
prus, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. 

In the second half of the nineteenth century England 
obtained complete control of the eastern Mediterranean 
Sea, as she had long held the other end at Gibraltar. 
Egypt had always been on one of the great trade routes, 
and the British had long been interested in it, but now 
occurred an event which gave it command of the princi- 
pal ocean highway of the world. A Frenchman, Ferdi- 
nand de Lesseps, organized a company, partly French, 
partly shared in by the Egyptian Government, for the 
purpose of cutting a ship canal through the isthmus that 
joined Africa and Asia. He afterward failed in a still 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



375 



greater undertaking at Panama, but in 1869 the Suez Canal 
was opened to traffic, and the route to the East, formerly 
around the Cape of Good Hope far to the south, was 
shortened by six thousand miles. Before the discovery 
of America the Mediterranean Sea had been the most 
important of all bodies of water; after the time of 
Columbus and Da Gama changed conditions had made 
its consequence less; but now the opening of the canal 
in Egypt made the Mediterranean the short water route 
between Europe and Asia, and the greatest sea way in 
the world. This route was now to pass under British 
control. In 1875, the Khedive, the ruler of Egypt, a 
spendthrift at the end of his resources, sold to the British 
Government Egypt's shares for £5,000,000. Thus Britain, 
owning nearly half of the stock, became the principal 
shareholder in the Company. 

The condition of Egyptian finances soon became so 
involved that the European powers intervened, and a 
Dual Control of the country was established by Great 
Britain and France. In 1881 a nationalist movement 
under Arabi Pasha threatened this foreign control and, 
France declining to participate, England suppressed the 
uprising and took possession of the country. France 
protested, but the British Government declared that it 
was not establishing a protectorate, and would withdraw 
as soon as conditions made it possible to do so. Egypt 
under British guidance and control settled down to pros- 
perity and order, and the masses of the people were better 
off than they had been for ages. But as the years went 
on British occupation continued. At length, in 1904, 
when Britain and France entered into the Entente Cor- 
diale, France withdrew her opposition; and in 1914, early 
in the Great War, Egypt was made a protectorate of the 
British Empire. Thus did the Mediterranean, held at its 
two ends, at Port Said and Gibraltar, come definitely 
under British control. 



The Suez 
Canal 



Egypt be- 
comes a 
British 
protectorate 



376 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 
Sudan 



Other pos- 
sessions in 
Africa 



South 
Africa 



Under British administration Egypt's domain was 
greatly extended. To the south lay the Sudan. Formerly 
it had been under Egyptian rule, but in 1881 the Sudanese, 
under a Mahdi, made themselves independent. At first, 
after Egypt had come under British control, the British 
Government would not undertake to reconquer the Sudan ; 
but in 1898 an English and Egyptian army under General 
Kitchener overthrew the Sudanese in the battle of Omdur- 
man, and all the country of the upper Nile was taken 
again. It was at this time that British and French ambi- 
tions in northern Africa came into conflict at Fashoda, 
and a great struggle between the two powers was so 
narrowly averted. 

France was not the only power now interested in Africa, 
and Fashoda was not the only place where conflict might 
have arisen. Actually, however, the division of Africa 
was peacefully accomplished. In 1884 a conference 
was held at Berlin upon African affairs; and in 1890 
agreements were made between Germany and Great Brit- 
ain and between France and Great Britain, by which rival 
claims were adjusted without any trouble. British posses- 
sions were now extended south from the Sudan through 
Uganda to British East Africa which had been already ob- 
tained. In exchange for Helgoland, which she ceded to the 
German Empire, Britain got the island of Zanzibar just off 
the east African coast. Thus an African empire had been 
built up from the mouths of the Nile to the Indian Ocean. 

To the south an empire equally magnificent had been 
constructed in the meantime. At the beginning of the 
century Cape Colony had been taken from the Dutch. 
Then the Boers, or Dutch farmers, went away to the 
interior and founded independent communities: the 
Orange Free State, Natal, and the Transvaal. In 1843 
Natal was annexed by the British, and the Orange Free 
State and the Transvaal were taken for a while, but soon 
given independence again. In course of time British 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



377 



dominion was extended far to the north of these small 
states. In 1889 the British South Africa Company was 
chartered, and under the leadership of Cecil Rhodes ac- 
quired the vast country afterward known as Rhodesia. 
So British territory in Africa extended down from the 
Mediterranean to German East Africa and up from the 
Cape of Good Hope to this same German possession. In 
1899 the trouble which had long been growing between 
the British in South Africa and the Boer republics de- 
veloped into a war, in which the small Dutch communities 
of hardy farmers, expert with rifle, well provided with artil- 
lery made in France, and taking advantage of the great dis- 
tances of the country, proved themselves no ill match for 
Great Britain, obliged to carry on a diflScult contest far 
from her base of operations. After skilful and heroic 
resistance, however, the Boers were completely con- 
quered, and the two states annexed by Great Britain. 
As a result of these various developments one third of the 
continent had come into British hands. 

During the latter part of the nineteenth century the 
British continued to enlarge their dominions in Asia. It 
was they who in the "Opium War" in 1842 forced the 
Chinese Government to open five "treaty" ports to 
foreign trade and also to cede to the British the small 
island of Hong Kong off the south China coast which 
later became a great emporium of trade with China. The 
Opium War itself was an exceedingly ugly affair. Not- 
withstanding its larger results, this war was interven- 
tion by the British because of vigorous and high-handed 
action by the Chinese Government trying to suppress the 
opium traffic and save its people from ruin of body and 
soul. One result of the British victory was that during 
many years the Chinese Government was unable to pre- 
vent the importation and use of opium. The despair 
and indignation of the enlightened people of China was for 
a long time ill understood, but after a while people in the 



The work 
of Cecil 
Rhodes 



Possessions 
in China 



378 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The opium 
traffic 



The ap- 
proaches to 
India 



western hemisphere came to realize the enormity and 
horror of the thing, and finally the British authorities 
themselves intervened to help to bring it to an end. From 
the opening of the Chinese ports an enormous and wealthy 
trade developed, of which the Great World Powers obtained 
increasing share. Toward the end of the century it ap- 
peared for a while that China was about to be broken up 
into parts, as some of the Great Powers began seizing upon 
"spheres of influence." In 1898, at a time when it seemed 
that Russia was about to get the greatest part of the 
spoils of the country, the British demanded and obtained 
the port of Wei-hai-wei, not far from Korea and Port 
Arthur, and far to the north of the old settlement at Hong 
Kong. A little later they crossed over the Indian frontier 
and began establishing their control in the outlying 
Chinese province of Tibet. 

India had from the first been the most important Brit- 
ish possession in Asia. After the defeat of the French 
in the eighteenth century it had long seemed far from 
possible enemies and safe from attack; but as the nine- 
teenth century passed by, the constant expansion of 
Russia brought the Muscovite power nearer, until vigi- 
lance against Russian expansion in Asia and the getting of 
a strong Indian frontier were of large moment in the 
policy of Great Britain. With Afghanistan, to the north- 
west and leading to some of the great approaches down 
into India, two wars were fought, in 1838 and in 1878, in 
the first of which an English army was annihilated, but as 
a result of which the country became in its foreign relations 
practically a protectorate of the British Empire, and a 
buffer state between India and Russia. In 1854 Baluchis- 
tan, west of India, across which Alexander the Great's 
soldiers once marched, was made partly dependent, and 
later on a portion of it was made completely so and the 
rest of it was annexed. To the west of these two little- 
known countries lay the ancient state of Persia. By the 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



379 



end of the nineteenth century Russian expansion threat- 
ened to absorb it, and at last bring the Russian Empire 
out to the warm waters of the south, on the Persian Gulf 
and the Arabian Sea, over across from India. To counter- 
act this, while the Russians were getting control of north- 
ern Persia, the British tried to dominate the south, and a 
long contest was ended when Great Britain and Russia 
made their agreement of 1907 by which the northern por- 
tion of Persia became Russia's sphere of influence and the 
southern a British sphere, with a neutral zone in between. 
To the east of India also British power was extended. In 
1885 Burma, on the other side of the Bay of Bengal, was 
annexed. To the northeast the mountain states of Nepal 
and Bhutan were made dependent, and then after a while 
the British crossed through the vast mountains which 
separate India from the dominion of China, and by 1914 
had made of Tibet practically an outlying dependent 
state. 

By this time Britain had beyond dispute the greatest 
colonial empire in the world. With the aggregate of her 
domain there was nothing to compare except the posses- 
sions of the United States, the vaster but less valuable 
territory of Russia, the huge expanses of stagnant China, 
and the colonial empire of France. The British Empire 
had been built up easily because England's geographical 
position had given her advantages over the greatest of her 
rivals, and her control of the sea had enabled her to in- 
crease her possessions from time to time in peace and as 
the result of every great war in which she fought. The 
area of the British Isles was only 120,000 square miles, and 
England less than half that much. The population of the 
United Kingdom was only about 45,000,000. But Eng- 
land, at the beginning of the sixteenth century one of the 
less important countries in Europe, was now the greatest, 
and the Empire of which she was the center embraced a 
fourth of the land surface of the earth. From this vast 



Persia 
divided into 
"zones" 



Extent and 
character of 
the British 
Empire 



380 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Peoples of 
the Empire 



British rule 



area came a large part of the world's tin, half of its gold, 
a third of its coal and a third of its wool, a fifth of its wheat, 
and other products without number. Its great weakness 
was that it was widely scattered, with the seas of the world 
separating its principal parts, and great land powers 
growing ever more powerful near them. It was held to- 
gether by the thing which had built it up : the strongest 
navy in the world. If ever the British fleet were beaten 
or dispersed, then the Empire would lie before the enemy 
like spoil to be taken at will. 

The British Empire was, in some respects, a strange 
and conglomerate affair. Not only were its parts widely 
separate and distant, but it embraced peoples of every 
race and religion and in all stages of culture and political 
progress. Its elements were far more diverse than those 
which composed Russia, so soon to break up, or the Dual 
Monarchy, which a great war was about to destroy. Out- 
side of the British Isles there were in this Empire some 
12,000,000 of English people, and about 3,000,000 more 
of the white race. They were mostly in Canada, Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Of the remaining 
365,000,000, all but 50,000,000 were in the vast ag- 
gregation of races in the Indian domain, while in Africa 
there were 40,000,000 negroes, and in the other lands some 
millions of Malays, Chinese, and others. A great part of 
all the Mohammedans of the world were under British 
rule, as were Brahmins, Buddhists, and many others. In 
holding together these peoples the British showed them- 
selves the ablest colonial administrators whom the world 
ever had seen. 

It is very true that under British rule there were some 
great evils. It is also true that in the Empire the people 
of England and Scotland had obtained great wealth and 
had made investments that rendered much of the world 
tributary to London ; while the British mercantile marine, 
largely supported by trade between the parts of the Em- 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



381 



pire, was the largest ever seen in the world. It is also 
true that some of the peoples in the Empire, in India and 
Egypt, were held unwillingly and longed to obtain indepen- 
dence. None the less, considering all the difficulties 
involved, it was also true that never had so great an empire 
been ruled so justly and well, and that wherever British 
rule had come, in India or the islands of the sea, better 
conditions had resulted for most of the people. In 1917 
an English writer said :" This Commonwealth ... is 
. . . a living home of divine freedom, in which the ends 
of the earth are knit together ... in the name and 
the hope of self-government." 

To all the white peoples outside of the United Kingdom 
self-government had been granted, in Newfoundland, 
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of South 
Africa. These self-governing dominions had such com- 
plete control of their own affairs that they were inde- 
pendent in all except name, ruling themselves through 
their own elected representatives. So loose was the 
connection, indeed, that a statesman declared that in 
August, 1914, the British Empire had come to an end. But 
at this very time it was abundantly shown that the bonds 
had never been stronger, and that while the dominions 
were no longer attached by any compulsion they were 
strongly bound by race and language and by ties of love 
and devotion. For some years statesmen in these different 
English-speaking communities had been considering the 
problem of closer imperial federation, and conferences had 
been held for this purpose. 

To the remaining 365,000,000 people of the Empire 
self-government had not been given. Theoretically, it was 
wrong that a modern democratic state should hold under 
its sway people to whom democracy and self-government 
had not been extended. But it could scarcely be 
doubted that the condition of the masses of India, bad as 
it was, had never been so good before, and that the fella- 



Self- 

government 
in parts of 
the Empire 



Subject 
peoples 



382 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The French 

colonial 

Empire 



Algeria 
acquired 



keen were attaining some prosperity and economic well- 
being for the first time in the history of Egypt. There 
could be no doubt that most of the non-white population 
of the Empire would not, if left to themselves, have 
evolved any representative system of self-government, 
and were not yet fitted to make it work. The compara- 
tive liberality of British rule made it the more possible 
for some of the educated minority and the upper classes 
among these people to demand independence, and it was 
most proper that they should desire to have it. None 
the less, it is probable that in 1914 the greatest good of 
most of the people in the Empire demanded the con- 
tinuance of British rule, and that the British Empire was 
one of the most useful and beneficent organizations in the 
world. 

Next in age and greatness was the colonial empire of 
France, which in 1914 had an area of more than 3,000,000 
square miles and a population of 44,000,000. Once the 
French had lost great possessions, and this was their sec- 
ond colonial empire, the work of the nineteenth century. 
After the Seven Years War and the contests of the Revolu- 
tion and Napoleon's time, France's colonial domain was 
reduced to a few trading posts in India, French Guiana 
on the north coast of South America, and a few islands, 
of which the most important were Martinique and Guade- 
loupe, in the West Indies. Since the losses her first con- 
spicuous advance had been during the period of the Orleans 
Monarchy. Across the Mediterranean in north Africa 
were the countries of the Barbary pirates: Morocco, 
Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli, whose people had preyed 
upon European commerce for ages, and carried off Chris- 
tians into the terrible slavery which Cervantes once suf- 
fered and described. In 1830, after the Dey of Algeria 
had struck the French consul in Algiers, an expedition was 
despatched which captured the city. After a while the 
reduction of the country was decided on and a long and 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



383 



troublesome war was waged which was not ended till 
1847, and the conquest was not entirely completed until 
ten years later. This was in the period of the Second 
Empire, when Napoleon III was endeavoring to reconcile 
Frenchmen to his rule by conquest and glory abroad. An 
ambitious colonial policy was now carried forward, some 
islands in the Pacific acquired, and, after a war with China, 
commercial concessions were obtained there. In 1862 the 
French obtained part of Cochin China and the rest of it 
five years later. In 1863 they established a protectorate 
over Cambodia. In 1867 a beginning was made of the 
acquisition of French Somaliland in East Africa, command- 
ing one side of the outlet of the Red Sea, Notwithstanding 
that Napoleon failed to make a dependency of Mexico, 
France was by the end of his reign getting to be the second 
colonial power in the world. 

The great defeat of France in the Franco-German War, 
had, as is well known, an important effect upon the de- 
velopment of her colonial policy. France recovered with 
amazing rapidity, but it seemed hopeless to try to get 
back the provinces which Germany had taken. She 
turned, therefore, to seek compensation abroad, and Bis- 
marck encouraged French statesmen to do this, glad to 
divert their attention elsewhere. In 1885, after a war 
with China, a protectorate was established over Tonkin 
and Annam, states in southeastern Asia upon which the 
Chinese had long had some shadowy claim. All these 
acquisitions, from Cambodia to the border of China, be- 
came French Cochin China, the chief Asiatic possession of 
France. 

But the greatest expansion of the French colonial em- 
pire now was made in northern Africa, where the French 
extended their power out from Algeria and through the 
Sahara, until all the north part of the continent to the 
borders of Egypt and Tripoli was included. In 1881 
Tunisia, to the east of Algeria, was occupied and became a 



Expansion 
after 1871 



The French 
in Africa 



384 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Fashoda 



Extent and 
character of 
this empire 



protectorate, though this cost the friendship of Italy for 
a generation, and had much to do with driving Italy into 
the Triple Alliance. In 1892 Dahomey, on the southern 
shore of the great north African bulge, was conquered, and 
from there, and from the mouth of the Senegal River, which 
they had long held, expeditions were despatched to the 
north. About the same time, farther south, French trad- 
ers pushed inland and acquired the French Congo. From 
all these points, north and south, explorers, as enterprising 
and bold as Champlain and La Salle once had been, 
entered the country and took it for France, until nearly 
all of the Sahara and its oases and trade routes were ob- 
tained. Eastward they pushed until Major Marchand 
unfurled the French flag at Fashoda in the Sudan. But 
by the Anglo-French agreement of 1899 the French with- 
drew, and Britain remained in possession of this country. 
In 1895 France established a protectorate over the island 
of Madagascar, off the southeast coast, once the haunt of 
pirates, a huge extent to which the French had laid claim 
since before the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 
1904 England and France settled all their differences in 
the agreement known as the Entente Cordiale: France 
agreed to make no further objection to British manage- 
ment of Egypt, and in return Britain promised support 
for French plans about Morocco. This country, which 
adjoined Algeria, was, in the eyes of the French, necessary 
to round out their north African possessions. But Ger- 
many now intervened and two great crises, in 1905 and in 
1911, brought Europe to the brink of war. On the first 
occasion France yielded; but after the second she estab- 
lished a protectorate in Morocco also. 

As a result of this expansion in Africa and In Asia 
France had a magnificent colonial empire. Her posses- 
sions were far less in area, population, and resources than 
those of the British Empire, yet some of them, like Mo- 
rocco and Algeria, lay in a position of great importance. 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



385 



they were a storehouse of raw materials, and furnished the 
products for a lucrative trade. Algeria had been annexed 
directly to France, and sent representatives to the legis- 
lature in Paris, though only a small portion of the popu- 
lation might vote, and the people had little control over 
the officials who ruled them. In Algeria to a considerable 
extent, and in the other colonies entirely, the French 
were an upper and ruling class. To none of the French 
colonies had complete self-government been extended, 
largely, no doubt, because to none of them had many 
Frenchmen ever gone to live. The French had shown 
great ability and skill in acquiring possessions, but they 
were not colonizers as the British were, for most French- 
men were unwilling to live anywhere but in France, and 
no high birth-rate produced a surplus population to send 
abroad. As in the British Empire so in the French, 
capitalists had large concessions and had made great in- 
vestments from which large revenues came. Yet for the 
most part the advent of France into these distant places 
had brought better conditions for the people; and it was 
usually believed that France had succeeded in establish- 
ing a greater degree of order, good government, and con- 
tentment in her African colonies than any other European 
power had brought to that continent, except the British 
in the white communities of the South African Union. 

In the latter part of the nineteenth century the German 
Empire also acquired colonial possessions, but they were 
far inferior in size and in value to those of Great Britain 
or France. It was often said that Germany entered the 
colonial field too late. At a time when Great Britain had 
obtained vast possessions, and when France was building 
a new empire also, the Germans were just achieving their 
national unity. Even after 1871 it seemed for some time, 
to Bismarck and his contemporaries, that colonies were 
of little importance, that the primary task was holding 
for Germany the position she had just attained, and keep- 



Algeria an 
extension 
of France 



The German 
colonies 



386 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Germany 
late in the 
colonial field 



Disappoint- 
ment and 
relative fail- 
ure 



ing leadership in Europe. Bismarck thought little about 
colonies, but much about his Triple Alliance and the 
friendship of Russia, and he was glad to encourage France 
to go forth and get what colonies she could. But to a 
younger generation colonies seemed indispensable, and 
about 1879 business men and merchants made the begin- 
ning of colonial development. In that year concessions 
were obtained in the Samoan islands. In the next few 
years other trading posts were established in islands of the 
Pacific and also in various regions in Africa. In 1883 a 
German merchant, Liideritz, laid the foundations of Ger- 
man Southwest Africa. A year later Togoland and 
Kamerun on the Gulf of Guinea were obtained by a Ger- 
man traveller. In the same year three other adventurous 
Germans acquired what was made into the most important 
of all Germany's colonial possessions, German East Africa, 
on the Indian Ocean. All these African holdings were got 
in the first place by travellers or merchants maldng 
treaties with native rulers. By this time the interest of 
Bismarck had been enlisted, and the German Government 
established protectorates in the new acquisitions. 

Nevertheless, when Germany strove to obtain colonies 
she found that the best were already taken by England or 
France, or lesser powers. She had gained a few islands in 
the Pacific, and some African lands, considerable in extent, 
but mostly unfit for white men, and far less rich than what 
others possessed. Gradually there developed in the minds 
of many Germans a strong sense of grievance, and re- 
sentment because their rivals had done so much better. 
To some of them it seemed unjust that France with 
a stationary population of but 40,000,000 should have 
enormous colonial dominions capable of immense develop- 
ment, while the German Empire with 65,000,000, and that 
population rapidly increasing, had no colonies to which 
Germans could emigrate, and only such possessions as 
others for the most part had not cared to take. To them 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



387 



it seemed necessary for Germany's greatness that more 
should be obtained. In the early years of the twentieth 
century certain Germans explained how, after a successful 
war, the colonies of France or of Great Britain would be 
taken; and undoubtedly the desire of some Germans to 
possess a larger colonial empire was one of the causes that 
led to the Great War of 1914. 

Many efforts were made to extend German possessions, 
mostly without any success. British and German schemes 
soon came into conflict. It was the ambition of some 
Englishmen to get a broad strip of territory from the 
Cape of Good Hope to Alexandria, while some Germans 
hoped that their country might acquire a stretch of 
territory straight across the breadth of the continent, 
from German Southwest Africa on the Atlantic to German 
East Africa on the Indian Ocean. In 1919, as a result of 
the Great War, the British ambition was realized, but 
previously a compromise had been made. In 1890 an 
Anglo-German agreement was made which so established 
German East Africa that the British were unable to 
connect the northern and southern parts of their African 
empire, and German Southwest Africa and Kamerun were 
enlarged. This was a period when Britain and the Ger- 
man Empire were still on quite friendly terms. Some 
leaders in both countries wished to bring about an alliance 
between the two, and England looked on France as her 
most dangerous foe. In 1898, about the time when Brit- 
ish and French ambitions conflicting nearly brought the 
two countries to war, a secret treaty was negotiated be- 
tween Germany and England with respect to the Portu- 
guese colonies in Africa. Above German Southwest 
Africa lay the large Portuguese dominion of Angola and 
on the other side of the continent, between German East 
Africa and the Transvaal, Portuguese East Africa inter- 
vened. The terms of the treaty have never been revealed, 
but it is believed that they arranged a division of these 



The English 
and the Ger- 
mans in 
Africa 



Anglo- 
German 
agreement 
of 1898 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Ger- 
mans in 
Asia and in 
South 
America 



Scanty 
colonial 
success of 
the Germans 



territories to take place later on when impoverished 
Portugal would be willing to sell them. This treaty came 
to nothing, partly because Germany and England now 
began drifting apart. 

In Asia, where Germany had got no foothold, she had, 
after a while, one temporary success. In 1897, to avenge, 
as they said, the murder of two missionaries, the German 
authorities seized Kiao-chau Bay in the Chinese province 
of Shantung, and compelled the Chinese Government to 
yield them a ninety-nine year lease of the place. Then 
they proceeded to fortify it and thus make of it a great 
naval base, which might later be the foundation of a 
German protectorate in China. In South America, 
especially in southern Brazil, where many German immi- 
grants had settled, it was believed that the German Em- 
pire hoped to get possessions, but here the Monroe Doc- 
trine of the United States always stood in the way. The 
best opportunity that remained seemed to be in Asia 
Minor and Mesopotamia, but here Germany encountered 
the opposition of Great Britain, until an agreement was 
made in 1914, just before the Great War broke out. 

Altogether the efforts of the Germans to found a colo- 
nial empire had met with scanty success. What they 
acquired yielded little revenue and cost a great deal to 
retain. It might have been that in the future the best of 
their colonies could have been successfully developed, but 
meanwhile the Germans seemed to show less skill than 
the British or the French. In attempting to impose their 
system and their organization upon the natives of their 
colonies they sometimes acted with great harshness and 
brutality, provoking the natives to rise, and then carrying 
on wars of extermination against them. This conduct 
brought them an evil renown, but it is necessary to re- 
member that the terrible climate of central Africa and 
the distance from the customs and civilization of white 
men led other colonizers besides the Germans to do deeds 




/A Russian 
Ottoman 
I ^ I Portuguese 
^S British 
I:-: ■/:'■:[ French 

ITTMl Dutch 

I8^S3 German 

^^S3 Under British Influence 

Y'/Z/A Under Russian Influence 

Scale of Miles 
200 400 

GthERAl Dfl*FTlHG CO IKC 



£2. ASIj 




N 1914 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



389 



which might well bring the blush of shame. Altogether, 
the German colonies afforded hope for the future rather 
than a present benefit, and entailed expense to German 
taxpayers greater than the revenue that was yielded by 
them, 

Italy, like Germany, entered upon the quest for colonies 
almost too late. Like the Germans the Italian people were 
long occupied in the effort to achieve national unity and 
make strong their position at home. When they turned 
to colonial expansion their first desire was to take Tunisia, 
which lay directly across the Mediterranean and seemed to 
them the most natural field for enlargement. But France 
also wished to have this country which lay on the border 
of Algeria, her new possession. Acting with greater 
promptness and decision France took possession of Tunisia 
in 1881. It was long before the Italians could bring them- 
selves to forgive this. They continued to be more 
numerous there than the French. Next they turned to 
an adventure in another part of Africa. Some years 
before, an Italian steamship company had obtained a port 
at the southern end of the Red Sea, and after 1882 Italy 
built up from this the colony of Eritrea. Seven years 
later she obtained Italian Somaliland, some distance to the 
south, lying on the Indian Ocean. Between these two 
possessions lay the old mountainous kingdom of Abys- 
sinia, inhabited by hardy tribesmen who from ancient 
times had professed the Christian faith. Over Abyssinia 
the Italian Government tried to establish a protectorate, 
but the inhabitants of the country would by no means 
submit, and in 1896 inflicted a terrible defeat on an in- 
vading Italian army at Adowa. Ten years after, Italy 
joined with Great Britain and France in acknowledging 
the independence of the country. 

About this time the Italians turned their attention to 
northern Africa once more. In 1901 the Italians and the 
French had settled their difierences, and it was under- 



Italian 
coloniza- 
tion 



Tripoli 



390 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Spain and 
Portugal 



The Dutch 
colonies 



stood that France recognized the paramount interest of 
Italy in the country of TripoH. This was practically the 
last remaining possession of the Ottoman Empire in 
Africa. Once all the north coast from Algeria to Egypt 
had been subject to Constantinople, though often the 
authority was nominal only. But in the course of the 
nineteenth century Algeria and Tunisia had been taken by 
France, and Egypt occupied by the British, until only 
Tripoli and Cyrenaica remained. In 1911 Italy suddenly 
demanded that the sultan yield these districts, and when 
this was refused, an army of invasion was sent. After a 
year of fighting Turkey was forced to cede them. The 
natives of the interior, however, long continued an harass- 
ing conflict which cost the Italians dear in money and men. 

Some of the lesser Powers like Spain, Portugal, and 
Holland, still retained important colonial dominions, the 
relics of what had been won in their great days of long ago, 
while in the nineteenth century Belgium obtained a do- 
main in Africa, rich in tropical resources. In 1898 Spain 
lost to the United States nearly all of what still remained 
of her colonies: Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippine 
Islands in the Far East. Portugal had long since lost 
the best of her colonies to the Dutch, from whom some 
had been taken by the British; but she still retained, in 
addition to some islands and trading stations, two large 
possessions on the opposite coasts of southern Africa, 
Angola in the west, and Portuguese East Africa which 
included Mozambique. The Portuguese Government no 
longer showed vigor in colonial development and expan- 
sion, and its finances were so hopelessly involved that it 
often seemed that it might be well if it could surrender 
its outlying possessions in settlement of national debts. 

The Dutch had lost long ago their important settlement 
at the mouth of the Hudson in North America, and, in 
South America, Brazil, which they had held for a while, 
though in the northern part of that continent they still 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



391 



retained Dutch Guiana. Of the other possessions which 
they had once had South Africa, Trinidad, and Ceylon 
had been lost to the British, but they still held the great 
islands of the Malay Archipelago, off southeastern Asia, 
Java, Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes, the Moluccas, and the 
western part of New Guinea, after Australia the largest 
island in the world, which they shared with the British 
and the Germans. 

The Dutch colonial empire for a great while had yielded 
huge store of raw materials and large revenue to Holland. 
It was far more valuable than the colonies of the German 
Empire and for a long time more valuable than those 
of France. It made Holland much more important than 
she would otherwise have been, and also constituted a 
mortgage upon her political actions. To Germans, who 
hoped for the later inclusion of Holland within their larger 
empire, the Dutch islands near Asia seemed a splendid 
addition to be made to the German colonies; while 
Holland, not a great naval power herself, could never afford 
to offend the powers who commanded the sea lest she lose 
her distant possessions. 

Belgium did not achieve independence until 1831, but 
within half a century she had obtained an extensive Afri- 
can possession. Following the explorations of Living- 
stone and Stanley in central Africa and the revelations 
they made of the possibilities and resources of this region, 
Leopold II of Belgium, after a conference of the powers 
held at Brussels, founded what he called the International 
Association of the Congo. He presently obtained the 
sanction of the Conference of Powers, which met at Berlin 
in 1884, to make of the Congo region an independent 
neutral jurisdiction, the Congo Free State, of which in the 
following year he became sovereign. He had invested 
large sums of money in this enterprise, but now, taking 
for himself great tracts of the rubber country as a personal 
domain, he began to reap a huge fortune from it. This 



Dutch colo- 
nial admin- 
istration 



The 

Belgian 

Congo 



392 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Imperialism 



Imperialism 
and national 
greatness 



was accomplished partly by forcing the natives to labor, 
and such stories of cruel brutality began to spread around 
the world that the administration of the Congo became a 
great scandal. After much contention the rights of Leo- 
pold were purchased by the Belgian Government in 1908, 
the Congo Free State was annexed by Belgium, and re- 
forms were introduced there. 

Imperialism, the getting and holding colonial empire, 
was probably an inevitable stage in the evolution of man- 
kind. It resulted partly from the superior power of some 
of the European nations and their greater ambitions which 
developed, partly because of the changes which accom- 
panied the Industrial Revolution. After the introduc- 
tion of the railroad and the steamship the world seemed 
smaller and its parts closer together. As a consequence of 
changes in the nineteenth century the population and the 
industries of Europe greatly expanded. The surplus 
population of England, Italy, and Germany went outside 
to other places. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, 
South Africa were all built up by such emigration, while 
the abler or the more adventurous went forth to such 
countries as India and Egypt to direct and govern the 
natives. For a long time great numbers of Germans left 
their homes, and many Italians went also, but they settled 
in the possessions of other powers, and were lost to the 
countries that produced them. There was nothing 
which German leaders lamented more than that Ger- 
many had no colonies to which her emigrants would 
go and there develop a greater and vaster German 
Empire. Moreover, the expanding industrialism of coun- 
tries like the German Empire and Great Britain fostered 
an increasing population, which could not be supported by 
domestic agriculture and which could get its food only by 
selling manufactured products abroad. Often it seemed 
to imperialists that these manufactures could be best sold 
in colonial possessions, and it was true that the colonies of 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 



393 



Britain and France bought many things from them. 
Furthermore, industriahsm depended on a supply of raw 
materials. A considerable portion of such products was 
in the colonial empires, especially of Great Britain, Hol- 
land, and France. After the old colonial system was 
ended in the earlier part of the nineteenth century Britain 
did not bar other countries from trading with her colonies, 
but some powers were not so liberal, and there was always 
the possibility that a state might attempt to monopolize 
the resources of its colonial possessions. So, German 
imperialists believed it necessary for Germany's greatness 
that lands producing cotton, copper, rubber, and oil 
should be taken and held. 

Even when it was doubtful whether the mass of the 
people would be benefited by colonial acquisitions, and 
very doubtful whether colonies were wanted by them, 
individuals who hoped to gain special privileges of great 
wealth, or who wanted protection for their investments, 
were often able to arouse the patriotism of the rest of the 
people and their love of greatness and glory for their 
country, and lead them on to support colonial adventure. 
And just as small businesses were being consolidated into 
great corporations, so a large part of the resources of the 
earth were being gathered into the possession of the 
principal powers. It seemed to many that the future 
lay only with those powers, like Russia and the United 
States, which had vast territory in which to expand, or 
with those like Great Britain and France, which had ob- 
tained colonies over the sea. The German desire to get 
more territory or colonies while time still remained was 
probably one of the major causes of the Great War. 

The subject populations were, probably, on the whole, 
better off than they would have been if left to themselves. 
That some of them were harshly and cruelly treated, that 
at best they had usually an inferior status, that they were 
often exploited, that they were ruled by aliens, that de- 



Colonies and 

industrial 

development 



Patriotism 

and 

colonies 



Subject 
colonial 
populations 



394 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Not allowed 
to govern 
themselves 



Sense of 
responsibil- 
ity in ruling 
countries 



mocracy and self-government were never extended to 
them, that they were denied many things which their 
European masters had, is quite true. If all this be con- 
sidered from the point of view of what European liberals 
wanted for themselves, it appears very lamentable indeed. 
But it must be remembered that the people of Algeria, of 
India, of Egypt, and of Burma had not been able to 
develop democracy or much well being for the masses; 
that the negroes of Africa were far down in the scale of 
mankind, and that those who could survive were being 
rapidly lifted up through whole stages of human progress. 
Whatever evils attended imperialism, and they were not' 
few or small, it is probable that the peoples affected were 
benefited and prepared for things better to come. It is 
certain, also, that Americans and Englishmen and French- 
men were coming to have greater concern for their re- 
sponsibilities and ever-greater desire to protect and im- 
prove the condition of the peoples over whom they ruled. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, De la Colonisation chez les 
Peuples Modernes, 2 vols. (6th ed. 1908); Alfred Zimmermann, 
Die Europdische Kolonien, 5 vols. (1896-1903), with bibliog- 
raphies and maps; S. P. Orth, The Imperial Impulse (1916); 
P. S. Reinsch, World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century 
(1900). 

The British Empire: E. G. Hawke, The British Empire and 
Its History (1911); C. F. Lavell and C. E. Payne, Imperial 
England (1919); Sir C. P. Lucas, The British Empire (1915), A 
Historical Geography of the British Colonies, 12 vols. (ed. 1916), 
Greater Rome and Greater Britain (1912); The Oxford Survey of 
the British Empire, ed. by A. J. Herbertson and O. J. R. Ho- 
wartli, 6 vols. (1914); A. F. Pollard, editor, The British Empire: 
Its Past, Its Present, and Its Future (1909); A. J. Sargent, Sea- 
ways of the Empire (1918); W. H. Woodward, A Short History 
of the Expansion of the British Empire, 1500-1911 (3d ed. 1912). 
Sir Charles Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain (1890), The 
British Empire (1899); H. E. Egerton, Federations and Unions 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 395 

Within the British Empire (1911); R. Jebb, The Imperial Con- 
ference, 2 vols. (1911). 

British East Africa: Captain F. D. Lugard, Rise of Our East 
African Empire, 2 vols. (1893). 

Australia: G. W. Rusden, History of Australia, 3 vols. (1883); 
H. G. Turner, The First Decade of the Australian Common- 
wealth (1911). 

Canada: SirJ. G.Bourinot, CanatZa Under British Rule, 1760— 
1900 (1900); F. X. Garneau, Hisioire du Ca7iada, {5ih ed., ed. 
by H. Garneau), 2 vols. (1920); William Kingsford, History of 
Canada, 10 vols. (1887-97), the fullest account, to 1841; S. J. 
Reid, Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham, 2 vols. (1906) ; 
Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America, 
ed. by Sir C. P. Lucas, 3 vols. (1912). 

Egypt: Sir A. Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt (1906); 
Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt, 2 vols. (1908), best account of; 
E. Dicey, The Story of the Khedive (1902); C. de Freycinet, La 
Question d'Egypte (1905); E. Gaignerot, La Question d'Egypte 
(1901); Alfred (Lord) Milner, England in Egypt (1892); H. 
Resener, Aigypten unter Englischer Okkupation (1896); A. E. 
P. B. Weigall, A History of Events in Egypt from 1798 to 1914- 
(1915); A. S. Wliite, The Expansion of Egypt (1899); F. R. 
Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan (1891). 

India: V. A. Smith, The Oxford History of India: from the 
Earliest Times to the End of 1911 (1919), excellent for an intro- 
duction; Sir T. W. Holderness, Peoples and Problems of India 
(1912), excellent; Sir J. B. Fuller, The Empire of India (1913); 
Sir Courtney Ilbert, The Government of India (3d ed. 1915); 
Sir John Strachey, India: Its Administration and Progress 
(3d ed. 1903); Lovat Eraser, India Under Curzon and After 
(1911); Lord Frederick Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, 2 
vols. (1898) ; Sir Valentine Chirol, ^he Middle Eastern Question, 
or Some Political Problems of Indian Defense (1903); G. N. C. 
(Earl) Curzon, Frontiers (1908); P, Loudon, The Unveiling of 
Lhasa (1905); Sir Theodore Morison, The Economic Transition 
in India (1911); Lajpat Rai, Young India (1916), England's 
Debt to India (1917), hostile. 

Malaysia: Arnold Wright and T. H. Reid, The Malay Penin- 
sula (1912); One Hundred Years of Singapore, ed. by W. Make- 
peace, Dr. G. E. Brooke, R. St. J. Braddell, 2 vols. (1920). 

South Africa: F. R. Cana, South Africa from the Great Trek to 
the Union (1909) ; G. E. Cory, The Rise of South Africa, volumes 



396 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

I-III (1910-19); W. B. Worsfold, Lord Milner's Work in South 
Africa (1906), The Union of South Africa (1912). On the Boer 
War: The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899- 
1900, edited by L. S. Amery, 4 vols. (1900). 

New Zealand: G. W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, 3 vols. 
(1883). 

The French colonies: Marcel Dubois and Auguste Terrier, 
Un Siecle d'Expansion Coloniale, 1800-1900 (ed. 1902); Jules 
Duval, Les Colonies et la Politique Coloniale de la France (1864); 
femile Levasseur, La France et Ses Colonies, 3 vols. (1890-3); 
Alfred Rambaud and others, La France Coloniale (6th ed. 1893). 

Algeria: Jules Cambon, Le Gouvernement iGenerale de I'Alge- 
rie, 1891-7 (1918). 

Indo-China: Albert Gaisman, UCEuvre de la France au Tonkin 
(1906); J. M. A. de Lanessan, La Colonisation Frangaise en 
Indo-Chine (1895); C. Lemire, La France et le Siam (1903). 

Madagascar: L. Brunei, La France a Madagascar, 1815-1895 
(2d ed. 1895). 

Morocco: A. Bernard, Le Maroc (1913); E. Dupuy, Comment 
Nous Avons Conquis le Maroc, 181^5-1912 (1913); A. Gourdin, 
La Politique Frangaise au Maroc (1906); V. Piquet, Le Maroc 
(1917). 

Tunisia: N. Fancon, La Tunisie avant et depuis VOccupation 
Frangaise, 2 vols. (1893); E. Fitoussi, UJ^tat Tunisien, Son 
Origine, Son Developpement et /Son Organisation Actuelle {1525- 
1901) (1901). 

The German colonies: Kurt Hassert, Deutschlands Kolonien 
(2d ed. 1910); P. E. Lewin, The Germans and Africa (1915); H. 
Mayer. Das Deutsche Kolonialreich, 2 vols. (1909) ; Alfred Zim- 
mermann, Geschichte der Deutschen Kolonialpolitik (1914). 

Italy in Africa: A. B. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia (1901); 
W. K. McClure, Italy in North Africa (1913); Sir Thomas 
Barclay, The Tur co-Italian War and Its Problems (1912); A. 
Rapisardi-Mirabelli, La Guerre Italo-Turque et le Droit des 
Gens (1913). 

Belgium and the Congo : G. Blanchard, Formation et Constitu- 
tion Politique de V^tat IndSpendant du Congo (1899); R. Brunei, 
V Annexation du Congo a la Belgique et le Droit International 
(1911) ; A. B. Keith, The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act (1919) ; 
J. S. Reeves, The International Beginnings of the Congo Free 
State (1894); E. Vandervelde, La Belgique et le Congo (1911); 
A. Vermeersch, La Question Congolaise (1906). 



IMPERIAL EXPANSION 397 

Africa: Baron Beyens, La Question Africaine (1918); N. D. 
Harris, Intervention and Colonization in Africa (1914); Sir H. H. 
Johnston, A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races 
(1899), The Opening up of Africa (1911); J. Keltic, The Partition 
of Africa (1893) ; Raymond Ronzc, La Question d'Afrique (1918) ; 
A. S. White, The Development of Africa (2d ed. 1892); E. L. 
Catellani, Le Colonic e la Conferenza di Berlino (1885), best on 
this subject; H. Queneuil, La Conference de Bruxelles et Ses RSsul- 
tats (1907), for the Brussels anti-slavery conference of 1890; 
Sir Edward Hertslet, The Map of Africa by Treaty 3 vols, (2d ed. 
1896) : and H, A, Gibbons, The New Map of Africa (1916). 

The Far East: Sir R, K, Douglas, Europe and the Far East, 
1506-1912 (1913), best; Lord Curzon, Problems of the Far East 
(ed. 1896); £, Driault, La Question d" Extreme Orient (1908), 
excellent; A, J, Brown, The Mastery of the Far East (1919) ; S, K. 
Hornbeck, Contemporary Politics in the Far East (1916); T. E 
Millard, The New Far East (1906) ; B. L, Putnam- Weale, Re- 
Shaping of the Far East, 2 vols. (1905), The Truce in the East 
(1907), 

China: H, Cordier, Histoire des Relations de la Chine avec les 
Puissances Occidentales, 1860-1902 (1902); H, Thompson, China 
and the Powers (1902) ; J. O. P. Bland, Recent Events and Present 
Policies in China (1912); P. H. Clements, The Boxer Rebellion 
(1915); H, A. Giles, China and the Chinese (1902), The Civiliza- 
tion of China (1911), China and the Manchus (1912), all excellent 
for the beginner: H, H. Gowen, An Outline History of China 
(1913); P. H. Kent, The Passing of the Manchus (1912); A. H. 
Smith, China in Convulsion (1901). 

Korea: H. B. Hurlbert, The Passing of Korea (1906); G. T. 
Ladd, In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908), 

Japan: K, K. Kawakami, Japan in World Politics (1917); 
Lancelot Lawton, Empires of the Far East, 2 vols, (1912), about 
Japan, China, and Manchuria; F. McCormick, The Menace of 
Japan (1917). 

Persia: Lieut.-Col, P. M, Sykes, A History of Persia, 2 vols, 
(1915), down to 1906; V, Berard, Revolutions de la Perse (1910); 
E. G, Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910) ; Lord 
Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (1892) ; W. M. 
Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (1912). 

Asia: A, T, Mahan, The Problem of Asia (1900); H. A. Gib- 
bons, The New Map of Asia (1900-1919) (1919). 



Preemi- 
nence of the 
German 
Empire, 
1871-1904 



CHAPTER XV 

TRIPLE ALLIANCE AND THE 
ENTENTES 

. . . I'aigle provoque prendra son vol, saisira rennemi dans ses 
serres acerees, et le rendra inoffensif. Nous nous souviendrons 
alors que les provinces de I'ancien empire allemand: Comte de 
Bourgogne et une belle part de la Lorraine, sont encore aux mains 
des Francs; que des milliers de freres allemands des provinces bal- 
tiques gemissent sous le joug slave. C'est une question nationale 
de rendre a I'AUemagne ce qu'elle a autrefois possede. 

Alleged secret German official report, communicated by the 

French Minister of War to the French Minister of Foreign 

Affairs, April 2, 1913. 

Immer enger werden die Maschen des Netzes, in die es der franzo- 
sischen Diplomatic gelingt, England zu verstricken. Schon in den 
ersten Phasen des Marokkokonflickts hat bekanntlich England 
an Frankreich Zusagen militarischer Natur gemacht. 
Die Englische Flotte ubernimmt den Schutz der Nordsee, des 
Kanals und des Atlantischen Ozeans. . . . Die Englische 
Regierung spielt ein gefahrliches Spiel. 

A report of 1913, published in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine 
Zeitung, October 16, 1914. 

For a generation after the Franco-German War the 
German Empire enjoyed undisputed preeminence in 
Europe, not only because of its own enormous strength, 
but from the fact that it was the head of the Triple Al- 
liance with Italy and Austria-Hungary. Even after the 
arrangement between France and Russia in 1892-3 the 
supremacy of Germany was not seriously disturbed. This 
Dual Alliance was regarded with suspicion not only by the 
rival alliance but by Great Britain as well. Therefore, 
down to 1900, at least, and actually for a few years after 
that time, the German Empire continued to be what it 

398 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 399 



had been during the later period of Bismarck, the domi- 
nant power on the continent of Europe. And, indeed, 
it did more than hold its place; for ambition increasing 
with the marvellous expansion of its power, it became year 
by year stronger and more magnificent to friends and 
admirers, more threatening and terrible to the others. It 
was this increase in power and ambition that brought 
about the large diplomatic changes that now shortly came 
to pass. 

Hitherto the weaker Dual Alliance had confronted the 
stronger Triple Alliance, with Britain on the outskirts of 
Europe, aloof from Continental affairs, and usually more 
friendly toward Germany than either Russia or France. 
In 1904 England and France settled their differences 
and made an arrangement, the Entente Cordiale, which 
was not an alliance but in the end proved to be just as 
effective as one, and three years later, when England and 
Russia settled their differences also, in the Anglo-Russian 
Accord, Dual Alliance and Entente Cordiale coalesced 
in a vaster combination, the Triple Entente. Thereafter 
Europe was practically divided into two great combina- 
tions; and the Triple Entente was so strong that Ger- 
many's old position of easy superiority was gone. The 
hegemony of the German Empire, established when Bis- 
marck kept her enemies divided, had passed. During this 
later time the German leaders tried to recover the old 
position and dictate their wUl to the others. Four times 
did they attempt this, and each time a crisis resulted 
which shook the European structure and seemed to lead 
straight to war. On two of these occasions, the Morocco 
Crisis of 1905 and the Affair of Bosnia-Herzegovina 
in 1908-9, Germany won signal triumph, and seemed 
to be master once more. Twice, in the Morocco Crisis 
of 1911 and the crisis that arose concerning the Bal- 
kans in 1912, discomfiture came. Each time, in the end, 
war was avoided. But the tension gradually became 



Europe 
divided: 
rival com- 
binations, 
1904-1914 



The great 
crises 



400 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Great 
Britain and 
France 



The 

Entente 
CordialOf 
1904 



SO great that increasingly people believed another such 
difference would make it difficult to avoid war again. The 
fifth crisis came in 1914, after the Austrian ultimatum to 
Servia. Then the dread catastrophe followed. 

The origin of the Entente Cordiale may be traced to one 
great cause: fear of Germany in England and in France. 
The nations to the north and south of the English Channel 
had been rivals or enemies for ages, and so different were 
the character and ideals of the two that rarely had they 
been able to regard each other with much sympathy and 
understanding. In the last part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury it might well have seemed hopeless ever to attempt 
to bring them together, and Bismarck had not found 
any effort needed to keep them apart. As late as 1898 
England and France had been very near to war. But 
France had once been under the German's heel and had 
never forgotten ; for thirty years she had lived right beside 
a neighbor who had often been arrogant and sometimes 
threatening; Germany was growing in population and 
power so much more rapidly than France as to make 
Frenchmen see that in another war they could have little 
chance, and a new school of French leaders believed that 
some day such a conflict could not be avoided. Accord- 
ingly, after 1898, with the passing of Hanotaux, who dis- 
liked Britain and preferred German friendship, a new 
group came into power, among whom Theophile Delcasse 
shortly became most important. It was their belief 
that France had best seek the friendship of England. 

The old school was passing in Great Britain also. Queen 
Victoria's German husband had died long before, she 
herself died in 1901, and a year later the Marquis of 
Salisbury. The German naval laws of 1898 and 1900 were 
making the new generation of Englishmen have an appre- 
hension of Germany that those before never had. It be- 
gan to be said that Britain could no longer, such were the 
changed conditions recently developed, afford to maintain 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 401 



her "splendid isolation"; that she must have her own 
friends to stand with if there were need. Foremost 
among them was the new king, Edward VII, who was 
fond, moreover, of France. So, in 1904 France and 
England signed an agreement by which they amicably 
adjusted all their differences everywhere, France ac- 
quiescing in the British occupation of Egypt, against 
which she had often protested, and Britain promising to 
support France in her plan to get possession of Morocco: 
"The two governments agree to afford each other their 
diplomatic support." It was afterward seen, on the 
publication of the secret articles in 1911, that the two 
powers, while not making an alliance, had given each other 
assurances of assistance, should it be needed. In 1914 
Sir Edward Grey laid before the House of Commons 
correspondence which had passed between Britain and 
France two years before with respect to cooperation of 
their navies. In 1904 an alliance was not, perhaps, de- 
sired, and would probably not have been tolerated by 
many people in either of the countries. Moreover, it 
was said then that Germany was resolved that such an 
alliance should not take place, and was willing to go to 
war to prevent it. 

When the terms of the Entente were made known Ger- 
many seemed at first to make little objection. "There is 
no need ... to take umbrage," said a German news- 
paper in which semi-official announcements were made. 
But the kaiser soon spoke of the great days of the German 
past, and of need for courage in trials that might be ap- 
proaching. A little later Germany intervened with terrible 
brusqueness. March 31, 1905, the kaiser suddenly landed 
at Tangier, opposite Gibraltar, in Morocco, and told the 
sultan that he would uphold his sovereign power. To 
France this was as direct a challenge as could be made, for, 
following the conclusion of the Entente, Frenchmen were 
making ready to end the anarchy which had long existed 



" Splendid 
isolation" 
abandoned 



The Kaiser 
at Tangier 



402 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



France not 
able to resist 



Secret 
Treaty of 
Bjorko, 1905 



The first 
Morocco 
Crisis, 
1905 



in Morocco, and round out their north African empire by 
taking Morocco for themselves. After the kaiser's sudden 
assertion it was evident that France must, at Germany's 
behest, give up the enterprise or risk almost certain war. 

The moment was well chosen for Germany's move. 
France herself was weak and in no condition to fight a 
great war. It was by no means certain yet how far 
Britain would support her, or, in view of political condi- 
tions in the British Isles, how far she could give support. 
Worst of all, no help could be expected from Russia. She 
was involved in a war with Japan, in which she had under- 
gone repeated defeats, and just suffered the great disaster 
of Mukden. In the course of the struggle, rebellion and 
disorder had arisen in her realm, so that she was now dis- 
tracted and weak. She had received no vital hurt, but 
for the moment her power and prestige were gone, and 
her condition was such that years of recuperation would 
be needed. Furthermore, we know now, what may have 
been suspected but was not known then, that the German 
emperor had been secretly intriguing with the tsar, over 
whose weak character his own obtained easy ascendancy. 
He was busily endeavoring to have Russia attach herself 
to Germany against England, who, he said, was the real 
enemy, and have her bring France into a Continental 
combination, which Germany should lead. A few months 
after this time, in July, 1905, kaiser and tsar met on 
board a vessel at Bjorko in the Baltic, and there signed a 
secret treaty directed against England. This engagement 
was rejected by the Russian ministers and so not accepted 
by the Russian Government, but such negotiations tem- 
porarily weakened the Dual Alliance. 

It was a terrible moment for France; but she was not 
prepared to fight, and so had to yield to a great humilia- 
tion. There was in Paris at this time a German, Count 
Haenckel von Donnersmarck, whose business was not 
known, but who was understood to be the unofficial repre- 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 403 



sentative of the kaiser. To a French newspaper he gave 
out an interview the meaning of which was not to be mis- 
taken: M. Delcasse's poHcy was dangerous to Germany 
and was leading to war; in such a war France might win, 
but if she did not the peace would be dictated in Paris; he 
meant his advice kindly: "Give up the minister." And 
this was done, for as late as 1905 Germany could still 
command and France obey. Delcasse was forced to 
resign, and France was not only compelled to yield with 
respect to her Moroccan policy, but was virtually forced 
to appear before a European conference, which was called 
to sit upon the matter at Algeciras, in Spain, over the bay 
from Gibraltar. 

Actually German diplomacy had gone too far, and at 
the Conference held in 1906, to which the United States 
sent representatives, much less was gained than had been 
the case six months before. The French had diligently 
strengthened their military resources, and the English, 
who had perhaps been more willing to go to war than the 
French in 1905, continued resolute, while Russia was now 
at peace. The French presented their case much more 
skilfully than the Germans, who had relied too greatly 
on mere display of force, and France gained a large part 
of what she wanted; for to France and Spain jointly was 
given the task of preserving order in Morocco. The re- 
sults of the affair were none the less a large triumph for 
Germany. She had not, indeed, succeeded in breaking 
up the Entente Cordiale, which she much desired to ac- 
complish; and it was seen now that the agreement was 
stronger than ever; nor had she imposed upon France as 
great a humiliation as at first had seemed likely. But 
she had forbidden France to take Morocco, and France 
had yielded, and at her behest a French minister of foreign 
affairs had been driven from oflSce. Apparently the posi- 
tion of Germany in Europe was as high as in the days when 
France stood almost alone. 



"Warning to 
France 



The Con- 
ference of 
Algeciras, 
1906 



404 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Great 
Britain and 
Russia 



The Anglo- 
Russian Ac- 
cord, 1907 



If fear of Germany and trend of diplomatic events had 
drawn France and Great Britain together in an under- 
standing which grew closer all the time, the same forces 
tended to draw together Russia and Great Britain, and, in 
effect, form a combination of Great Britain, Russia, and 
France. This was made easier because of the Russo- 
Japanese War. For a long while British statesmen had 
believed that as France was the nearest and most imme- 
diate danger, so, farther away, the great danger came from 
Russia. Russia had long been steadily expanding her 
dominion in Asia, slowly, but in a manner that seemed not 
to be resisted. Many Englishmen believed that this prog- 
ress would one day bring the Russians down to India, to 
the Persian Gulf, and even to the Mediterranean, and that 
it might threaten the British Empire with destruction. 
It was for this reason that England had joined with 
France to protect Turkey in the Crimean War, and later 
had successfully opposed Russia after the Russo-Turkish 
War in 1878. With respect to India the danger seemed 
even greater, for if the Russian Empire expanded down to 
the Indian frontier it was conceivable that at last the 
country might be invaded with a great army which Britain, 
thousands of miles away, could never resist. For some 
years before the war with Japan Russia seemed to have 
turned away from European interests and to be en- 
grossed with advancing in Asia, so that Great Britain 
was more and more apprehensive. 

But after 1905, when Russia defeated seemed less dan- 
gerous than before, she again turned back to Europe, and, 
as was soon seen, entered into rivalry with Germany 
rather than Great Britain. All this took place at a time 
when British suspicion and dread of the German Empire 
were steadily increasing. It took place also at a time 
when France, the ally of Russia, was becoming ever more 
closely bound to England. The result of all these fac- 
tors was that in 1907 the British and the Russian govern- 



V 3 J o 





o 1 




•J5 


<D 












s 








O 






O 










to 


o ■ 




ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 405 



merits settled their differences in friendly and generous 
spirit much as France and England had done shortly 
before. In this arrangement Russia agreed that the con- 
trolling influence in Afghanistan and in Tibet should be 
held by Great Britain, who thus got a secure frontier for 
India, and practically Persia was divided between the two 
powers. After 1907 there were, over against the Triple 
Alliance, the secret agreement between Russia and France 
or the Dual Alliance, the Entente Cordiale of Great Britain 
and France, and the Anglo-Russian Accord of Great 
Britain and Russia. These three arrangements now 
came to be spoken of together as the Triple Entente, and 
for the next seven years men understood that Europe 
was dominated by the two rival combinations. Triple 
Alliance and Triple Entente. 

But while this was destined to check Germany soon, it 
could not do so at once, and in the very next year, in 
company with her principal ally, she secured another more 
signal triumph. This time it was in the east of Europe, and 
had to do with the greatest of Teutonic interests, control of 
the Balkans. In 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, in spite of a general European treaty, the 
Treaty of Berlin, and in direct defiance of Russia's wishes. 

By the Treaty made under the auspices of the Congress 
of Berlin the two Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina had been put under the control of Austria-Hungary, 
though sovereignty continued to be vested in Turkey. 
Actual connection with Turkey ceased, however, and the 
government of the Dual Monarchy set to work to bring 
order to the districts and make them thoroughly sub- 
servient to its rule. The people were largely debarred 
from professional and governmental positions and treated 
as inferior to Hungarians or Germans, but considerable 
material prosperity was brought about, and in many 
respects the condition of the South Slavs in these provinces 
was better than the condition of those who ruled themselves 



The Triple 

Entente, 

1907-14 



The Bosnia- 
Herzegovina 
Crisis, 
1908-9 



Bosnia and 
Herzego- 
vina, 
1878-1908 



406 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Young 
Turk Revo- 
lution 



Austria- 
Hungary 
annexes 
Bosnia and 
Herzego- 
vina 



in the neighboring states of Servia and Montenegro. As 
time went on, Austria-Hungary came to regard them as 
really a part of her domain, and Turkish ownership rather 
as a fiction. Thus things continued until 1908. In that 
year occurred the so-called Young Turk Revolution in the 
Ottoman Empire, in which the older regime was over- 
thrown by a band of zealous young leaders. They wished 
to make reforms, but they desired above all things to 
restore Turkish greatness, and believed that this could 
be done only by reviving a spirit of Turkish nationalism 
and welding all parts of the Empire together. Ignoring 
the Austrian possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 
Young Turks invited the population of the provinces to 
send representatives to an assembly in Constantinople. 
This seemed an attempt to prepare for Turkish possession 
of the country again if later on that could be brought 
about. But in the generation that had elapsed since 
the beginning of Austrian occupation the provinces had 
become more and more important in the schemes which 
Austria and Germany were conceiving. Possession of the 
provinces gave the Dual Monarchy assured control of a 
large part of the east shore of the Adriatic, and an impos- 
ing position in the Balkans, while possession of the country 
was necessary for the Teutonic scheme of controlling the 
way down to Turkey and the greater domain across the 
straits. Under no circumstances would either Germany 
or Austria see the loss of the provinces threatened, and so 
Austria acted at once. October 3, Austria-Hungary cast 
aside the provision of the Treaty of Berlin, without con- 
sulting the other parties to the Treaty, and announced that 
Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed. 

A dangerous crisis ensued. Turkey, most directly ag- 
grieved, strongly protested, but could do nothing, and 
after a while accepted pecuniary compensation and ac- 
quiesced. Great Britain and France, who had signed the 
Treaty of Berlin, were afifronted, and they protested. To 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 407 



Russia, also a signatory, and much more greatly interested 
because of her position and ambition in the Balkans, the 
affront was far greater and she insisted that the matter be 
laid before a European congress. Most furious of all was 
Servia, the neighboring independent South Slavic state. 
She had long hoped that when the day came of the break- 
ing up of European Turkey, the Bosnians and their kins- 
men would be united in a greater Servian kingdom, like 
that which had flourished centuries before, in the days 
before the coming of the Turk. And she had hoped that 
possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina would help her 
toward the outlet to the sea without which she could 
never be great. If the provinces now were finally in- 
corporated into Austria-Hungary, the dream of future 
Servian greatness would never be realized. Accordingly, 
while Russia was prepared to oppose the action as strongly 
as she could, Servia was resolved to fight to the death, 
and could with difficulty be restrained from attacking her 
powerful neighbor. 

Austria refused to discuss her action any further. She 
was willing that a European congress should be called, but 
the taking of Bosnia and Herzegovina must be regarded as 
a fait accompli. Russia resisted firmly, and was supported 
by her two partners in the Triple Entente. Servia, be- 
lieving that she would be helped by Russia, made ready 
for war. With grave and anxious months the winter of 
1908-9 passed slowly. Then suddenly the matter was 
ended when Germany decisively intervened. She was 
apparently in the delicate position of having to offend one 
of her friends. She had enormous interests in Turkey, 
and her greatest hope for the future lay in making the 
Turks friends and dependents. Not less important was 
the alliance with the Dual Monarchy, whose position she 
would at all costs maintain. But her very able ambassa- 
dor in Constantinople, Von Bieberstein, v/ho was already 
busy in winning the allegiance of the Young Turks, 



Russia and 
Servia in the 
crisis 



Germany 
compels 
Russia to 
yield, 1909 



408 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



''Shining 
Armor" 



Imposing 
position of 
the German 
Empire, 
1909-11 



persuaded them that it was best to accept the inevitable, 
and so Turkey and Austria came to agreement. Mean- 
while, Germany gave full support to Austria against Rus- 
sia and the Entente. German troops were massed in 
formidable array along the Russian frontier, so that after- 
ward the kaiser could say that he had stood forth beside 
his ally "in shining armor." A messenger was sent to the 
tsar, presumably to ask whether Austria's action was 
satisfactory. Russia was in no condition to fight, for 
she had recovered little as yet from the disasters of the 
war with Japan, and it was doubtful whether England, 
perhaps France, would be willing to fight because of the 
Balkans where they had no direct interest. So Russia 
yielded suddenly and completely. At the end of March 
the Russian Government declared that it recognized the 
annexation as a fait accompli. A few days later Servia, 
with bitterest humiliation, signed a document declaring 
that she renounced her attitude of protest against the 
annexation, and would "live in future on good, neighborly 
terms" with Austria-Hungary. 

Thus in 1909 Russia had been humiliated and rebuffed 
as France had been in 1905. In the east as in the west 
of Europe, when Germany spoke with hand on the sword, 
German word was law. The old, splendid successes of 
Bismarck were being revived and exceeded. In spite of 
the formation of the Triple Entente the colossal power of 
Germany was not shaken, and she stood as dominant and 
terrifying as ever before. She had given command to 
France, and Great Britain had not been able to save 
France from yielding. She had spoken to Russia in be- 
half of her ally, and Russia had yielded completely. Austria 
was now the principal power interested in the Balkans as 
Germany was in Turkey; and Servia, the little protege 
of Russia, had been abandoned helpless, and forced to 
promise a friendship which she loathed. What was the 
Triple Entente beside the Triple Alliance .'^ And as if to 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 409 



crown the success she had gained, Germany now came 
to another separate understanding with the tsar. In 
November, 1910, the Russian ruler was the guest of the 
kaiser at Potsdam, and there an agreement was made by 
which Russia's position in Persia was acknowledged, and 
Russia withdrew opposition to the Bagdad Railway which 
Germany wished to complete. So, not only was the 
Enterite shaken when Germany spoke, but one of its mem- 
bers seemed to be drawing away. 

This crisis had been brought to an end without disaster, 
but like the others it left an evil train behind it, ominous 
of woes still to come. The cynical violation of the Treaty 
of Berlin by Austria-Hungary was fraught with conse- 
quences of evil. All through the nineteenth century, with 
the progress toward better things, there had been effort 
to have the sanctity of treaties held more reverently. 
"Contracting powers can rid themselves of their treaty 
engagements only by an understanding with their co- 
signatories," said the Declaration of London in 1871, to 
which Austria-Hungary had been a party. But among 
Germans there had been growing up of late the doctrine 
that treaties need not be kept if they were in opposition 
to the good of the State, and in the more terrible days of 
1914 this doctrine was to be reaffirmed when the treaty 
concerning the neutralization of Belgium was violated as 
a mere 'scrap of paper." The result of Austria's action 
in 1908 was to undermine public confidence in treaties and 
international engagements, and to make the more cau- 
tious men believe that such engagements were good only 
while maintained by force. 

This was the last great diplomatic triumph that 
Germany was destined to win. The success of 1908-9 was 
speedily followed by two setbacks which so far disturbed 
her position of supremacy in Europe that she was willing 
at last to make one more effort to get back her hegemony 
or else impose her will by force. And, as will be seen, it 



The Pots- 
dam Accord, 
1910 



Interna- 
tional en- 
gagements 
weakened 



The chang- 
ing current 
of affairs 



410 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Increasing 
strength of 
the Triple 
Entente 



France gains 
in assurance 
and strength 



Russia 
regaining 
her strength 



was such an attempt that led straight to the cataclysm 
of the Great War. 

The Entente Cordiale had been followed by humiliation 
for France, and the formation of the Triple Entente had 
not been able to save Russia from surrender a year later 
on; but actually the opponents of Germany and the 
Triple Alliance were coming more closely together and 
feeling that they could count on one another more certainly 
for support. Especially was this the case with England 
and France. They were strengthening their forces, and 
they were, apparently, strengthening year by year their 
determination not always to yield at Germany's behest. 
In France there was going on steadily both a revival of 
courage and assurance and a great rebirth of national 
feeling, which made people less disposed than before to 
crouch before the Germany which had conquered them 
once. In Great Britain there was each year more vivid 
apprehension of possible danger from the greatness of the 
German Empire, resolution to be on perpetual guard, 
and determination under no circumstances ever again to 
let France alone confront German aggression or suffer her 
to be crushed. The policy of Russia was more obscure, and 
depended, apparently, more on the personal character of 
the ruler, who was known to be partly under the influence 
of the kaiser. Yet, it was evident that Russia's principal 
ambitions were now in the Balkans, and that she was thus 
brought again into direct rivalry with the Teutonic 
powers. It was certain that she was rapidly recovering 
the naval and military strength that had been lost at 
Mukden and Tsushima. It was very evident also that 
the policy of Italy was now in conflict with that of 
Austria-Hungary, at the same time that Italy had renewed 
good relations with France, so that Italian support could 
no longer be counted on for Germany and Austria in any 
great war. All these factors had to do with the changes 
that now took place. 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 411 



The third of the great disputes between the opposing 
combinations came in 1911, and again it had to do with 
Morocco. After the Conference of Algeciras, France 
went steadily on with the work which the powers had 
committed to her. She also tried to come to an under- 
standing with Germany, and apparently for a while suc- 
ceeded in so doing. Thus encouraged she proceeded to 
take control of Morocco as far as she could. She had been 
permitted to occupy certain towns and maintain order, 
and under pretext of policing the distracted country she 
pushed an armed force farther and farther into Morocco. 
To Englishmen and Frenchmen it seemed, doubtless, 
that France was going quietly about what she had been 
so brusquely and even brutally forbidden to do. On 
the other hand, it must have seemed to Germans that 
France was furtively accomplishing that which they had 
tried to prevent in 1905, and what the European Congress 
of the following year had refused to permit. It looked 
as if Morocco was about to become a French possession, 
whatever appearances were maintained, and Germany re- 
solved that this should not happen without her consent 
and without a share of the country for herself. 

Accordingly, without preliminary warning, July 1, 1911, 
it was announced that German commercial interests in 
Morocco were being threatened, and that hence a German 
warship had been sent to the harbor of Agadir, on the 
Atlantic coast of Morocco, to protect them. But it was 
at once apparent that German interests were insignificant 
in the district, and that there was no unusual disorder. It 
was clearly realized that Germany had intervened this 
time as before, and at once there resulted a crisis which 
brought the nations to the brink of war. 

The moment was well chosen, as was the moment for 
the Austrian ultimatum to Servia three years later. France 
was torn by socialist and industrial agitation. There had 
just been a great strike on the railroads, broken only 



The second 
Morocco 
crisis, 1911 



Agadir 



Britain and 

France 

embarrassed 



412 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Strike of 
the railway 
workers in 
France 



The dip- 
lomatic 
struggle 



Feeling in 
France and 
in Great 
Britain 



when the government had mobihzed the trainmen as 
soldiers to run the trains, and the anger at this was so 
great that the discontented were practising acts of sabot- 
age, wrecking and destroying wherever they could. Min- 
istry was following ministry in quick and bewildering 
succession, and the government seemed weak and un- 
stable. In Great Britain also there was widespread 
industrial discontent, and there had just been disorders in 
Liverpool and London greater than people could remem- 
ber. Moreover, the country was in the very midst of the 
great constitutional struggle over the power of veto of the 
House of Lords, and the people were divided by a contest 
more bitter than anything since the passage of the Reform 
Law in 1867. Russia had recently entered into the Pots- 
dam Agreement with Germany, and Russia was in any 
event little interested in Morocco, which concerned her 
directly not at all. 

The question now resolved itself into another great 
contest between the Entente and the Alliance, or more 
particularly between Germany and England and France. 
Between the French and the German governments began 
a series of "conversations," while France sought to learn 
how far Britain would give her support. The French 
Government, which had itself effectually set aside the 
Algeciras Agreement, was yet able to maintain that Ger- 
many's action distinctly infringed the Agreement; while 
Germany, it would seem, with more bluntness, declared 
that France had made the Agreement of no force, and that 
in the new order of things which had arisen Germany 
must have a part of Morocco, or else, as she hinted, some 
compensation elsewhere. 

In France the German demands made a profound im- 
pression on a people always sensitive, and then in the midst 
of a revival of patriotic and national feeling. Germany's 
action seemed harsh and unprovoked. Few people 
wanted war, and most Frenchmen dreaded it; but while 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 413 



there was from the first a spirit of conciliation and no 
outburst of popular wrath, there was also an unexpected 
firmness and a decision not to bow down again. In the 
midst of the negotiations France went steadily on arming 
and preparing for the worst. In Britain political dissen- 
sions were hushed and put aside for the moment, as all 
parties stood close together. There was great popular 
sympathy for France and determination to support her. 
It was clearly realized that Germany, already dangerous 
to Great Britain on the seas, would be far more so if she 
got possession of part of Morocco, at the northwest corner 
of Africa, within easy striking distance of the Strait of 
Gibraltar, and lying right on the flank of the sea route to 
South Africa, constituting thus a menace both to Brit- 
ain's short- and long-water route to the East. For France 
the presence of Germany there would be no less a trouble 
and danger. It would always be possible for her to make 
easy attack on the French Empire in northern Africa, and 
always possible for her to stir up disaffection among the 
natives of Algeria and Tunisia. 

Accordingly the two powers stood resolute and un- 
daunted. All the French fleet was concentrated in the 
Mediterranean, and it was known that Britain's great 
fleet was ready in the Channel and in the North Sea. In 
the negotiations that were being carried on between Ber- 
lin and Paris, France, brought to bay, refused to let Ger- 
many have any share of Morocco. But if Germany would 
agree to give her a free hand there, she would from her 
other possessions grant compensation to Germany else- 
where. 

The German Government was soon in a diflBcult po- 
sition, much, indeed, like that in which it was during the 
last days of July, 1914. Germany had intervened with 
bold determination twice before. Each time her weaker 
opponents had yielded, and there had been no trouble 
because they had yielded. But now she had spoken 



Spirit of de- 
termination 
in France 



France re- 
fuses to 
yield 



Difficulties 
of Ger- 
many's 
position 



414 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The German 
Empire not 
ready 
for war 



The German 

Empire 

yields 



commandingly again, and this time her word was not be- 
ing obeyed. It presently became apparent that to en- 
force what she demanded war might be necessary, and it 
was also apparent that most of the German people were 
not sufficiently interested in Morocco to give enthusiastic 
support. The socialists were bitterly opposed to such a 
war; most of the people did not feel that a vital interest 
of the nation was at stake; and it could not be pretended, 
as it was three years later, that Germany was being at- 
tacked by envious foes who were trying to effect her de- 
struction. None the less, an important and influential 
part of the population, all those who had been striving 
for the creation of a greater German Empire and for the 
expansion of German sea power, insisted that a part of 
Morocco must be obtained, or, at least, certain coaling 
stations. But France, supported by Great Britain, 
firmly refused to consider yielding to Germany any part of 
the country; if, however, the Imperial Government ac- 
knowledged her absolute political supremacy in Morocco, 
so that it would not in the future be called in question, 
then she would cede to Germany about a third of her 
Congo territory. From this offer she would not swerve. 
Therefore, in the anxious weeks of August and Septem- 
ber, 1911, it seemed that any day war might break out. 
The French people dreaded the prospect of such a war, 
for they realized, as they did so clearly in 1914, that this 
time defeat meant the definitive loss of their position as a 
Great Power. But, encouraged by England, they stood 
watchful and firm. They were in a position far differ- 
ent from that of the earlier years when the Kaiser is re- 
ported to have said: "I hold France in the hollow of my 
hand." The best judges believed that the French were 
superior to the Germans in airplanes and field artillery, 
and there could be no doubt that the sea power of the 
Entente was overwhelmingly superior to the German. 
Brought to the time of decision the German Government 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 415 



hesitated at last. It is said that the best advisers were 
consulted about whether the present opportunity was 
favorable for a war, and the answers were against it. 
Especially did the financiers oppose a conflict. The 
French had been conducting what they called a "financial 
mobilization," The vast and expanding industry of 
Germany had been built up partly on borrowed capital, 
much of it supplied by the French. If the money founda- 
tion of this structure were shaken, the whole edifice might 
topple down in a great industrial panic. The French 
were silently calling in their loans, and a colossal panic 
seemed imminent with widespread economic ruin. Ac- 
cordingly, the French proposals were accepted; there was 
no war; and the crisis ended. 

By the end of September the danger was passed, and 
early in November an agreement was signed. Sub- 
stantially France established a protectorate over Morocco, 
guaranteeing to all nations equality of trade; and she 
ceded to Germany part of her Congo territory. The ar- 
rangement was not completely satisfactory, since French- 
men believed that Germany had been bribed to permit 
what she had no right to interfere in, and Germans were 
bitterly disappointed that they had obtained no part of 
Morocco. Germany had, it is true, been so confident of 
her strength that she had defied both England and France, 
and she had made good her contention that no important 
matter could be settled unless she was consulted ; but she 
was no longer able to carry her point, and if she had hoped 
to drive England and France apart and break up the 
Entente Cordiale, it was apparent now that the under- 
standing was closer than ever and virtually a strong alli- 
ance. 

One of the principal results of this contest was increas- 
ing German bitterness toward England. Great Britain 
had supported France stoutly, and in Germany there had 
been widespread indignation at what was termed the un- 



The Mo- 
rocco ques- 
tion settled 



German bit- 
terness 
toward Eng- 
land 



416 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Balkan 

crisis, 

1912-13 



Austria- 
Hungary 
opposes 
Servia 



warranted interference of England. "We know now the 
enemy who loses no chance to bar our way." This bitter- 
ness resulted largely from comprehension that British 
support had made it possible for France to give Germany 
the greatest diplomatic set-back that Germans had known 
since before the Franco-German War. On all sides was 
expressed the determination to see that, next time, the 
Fatherland would be so prepared that there would be no 
receding; and it was probable that if another crisis found 
Germany ready she would not again endure to be checked. 
But the next crisis did not arise through Germany's 
seeking, though it soon involved Austria's interests and 
her own. It came from the Balkan wars of 1912 and 
1913, and had to do with Teutonic influence and plans in 
southeastern Europe. After the overwhelming defeat of 
Turkey early in the First Balkan War representatives 
of the Great Powers assembled in London to discuss 
the startling new problems just raised. It was not long 
before dangerous tension developed. Servia, by reason 
of her success, had not only conquered territory which she 
greatly desired, but she had now the chance of extending 
down through Albania and getting an outlet on the 
Adriatic Sea. To this Austria-Hungary was altogether 
opposed. Not only was Servia more hostile and danger- 
ous to her than any other Balkan state, so that she was 
entirely unwilling for Servia to become greater and more 
independent, but a strong Servia resting on the sea 
would really block her hoped-for extension toward the 
iEgean. Therefore she declared, in effect, that Servia 
must not reach to the sea and that she must not occupy 
Durazzo. Servia insisted upon getting the city, and in 
November Austria began to mobilize her troops. Then 
Germany declared that she would support her allies if 
they were attacked. Russia began to mobihze troops 
behind the screen of her Polish fortresses, and France 
announced that she would stand by her ally if she were 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 417 



needed. Italy, while opposed to Servia appearing on the 
Adriatic, was as much opposed to further extension of 
Austrian power down the eastern coast of that sea. In 
Great Britain public opinion, so far as it was interested, 
was in favor of letting the small Balkan States keep the 
conquests they had won from the Turk, even though at 
the beginning the Great Powers had announced that these 
states would not be allowed to make conquests. 

Servia yielded and withdrew her troops, and in the 
treaty of peace that followed an independent Albania 
was constituted, as Austria wished. The Montenegrins, 
however, continued to besiege Scutari, in northern Al- 
bania, and after a long investment, captured the for- 
tress. Before the fall of the city the powers had notified 
Montenegro that Scutari was to belong to Albania, and 
then they blockaded the one little harbor which Monte- 
negro possessed. When Scutari fell, Austria-Hungary de- 
manded that it be given up at once, and went forward with 
the mobilization of troops. Again Russia made ready to 
support her Slavic kinsmen as when the Servians had been 
threatened some months before over Durazzo. Once 
more the crisis was passed when Montenegro yielded to 
the pressure of the powers and abandoned the city which 
she had just taken at such great cost. 

The result of the Second Balkan War, even more than 
that of the First, produced a profound alteration in the 
balance of power and politics in Europe. Early in 1912, 
after long struggle between the Teutonic powers and Rus- 
sia for predominating influence in the Balkans, the result 
then was that Servia, small and unimportant, along with 
Montenegro, of little consequence, were friendly to Russia 
and to some extent dependent on her, while Greece, also 
unimportant, was bound by many ties to France. On the 
other hand, Rumania, the strongest and most progressive 
of the Balkan states, was allied by secret agreement with 
the Central Powers, and thus attached to the Triple Alli- 



Servia and 
Montenegro 
yield to 
Austria- 
Hungary 



The new 
situation in 
the Balkans, 
1913 



418 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Diminished 
power of the 
Triple 
Alliance 



Austria de- 
sires to re- 
cover her 
influence in 
the Balkans, 
1913 



German 
preparations 
not com- 
plete 



ance; Bulgaria, strong and successful, was very friendly 
to the Dual Monarchy, and Turkey, still believed to be 
more powerful than any of her neighbors, was bound by 
close ties to the German Empire. But after the end of 
the Second Balkan War not only was the strength of 
Turkey as a European power so weakened that she counted 
for little more than possessor of the incomparable site of 
Constantinople and territories in Asia, but Servia, the 
bitter enemy of Austria, had come out of both wars with 
increased power and territory and greatly increased 
prestige, and Rumania, former friend of the Central 
Powers, was no longer so closely bound to them, and had, 
indeed, acted contrary to their wishes against their friend. 

Altogether, the position of Germany and Austria- 
Hungary was less good with respect to the Balkans than 
before. It seemed to both of them, apparently, that their 
position was endangered and impaired. Austria greatly 
desired to settle at once her account with Servia, and 
reduce her permanently to a position in which she could 
never again be a source of apprehension. It was learned 
afterward that in August, 1913, Austria-Hungary wished 
to proceed against Servia at once, and tried to get her 
partners in the Triple Alliance to join her. But the Italian 
Government, describing it as a "most perilous adventure," 
refused to give sanction, and the matter was dropped until 
the next year. What action Germany then took is not 
certain, though most probably she also dissuaded her ally. 
During the conference of the powers in London, she had 
acted along with Great Britain in trying to settle peace- 
ably the matters at issue. 

Had she joined Great Britain in the next year as cor- 
dially, it is probable that the Great War would have been 
avoided. But whereas in 1914 she was ready for the 
great decision, it is known now that in 1913 she did not con- 
sider her preparations complete. The changes in the Bal- 
kans seemed to diminish her military superiority, and in 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTES 419 



1913 many Germans declared that the country could be safe 
from the growing menace of Russia and Pan-Slavism only 
if great sacrifices were made and the army largely increased. 
Accordingly, huge and extraordinary sums of money were 
voted for greater armaments, and the army was increased 
to 870,000 men. Immediately thereupon the French, feel- 
ing the greater danger from Germany, increased their 
army also. They could not with their stationary popu- 
lation simply expand their standing army as the Germans 
were doing, but by keeping the troops with the colors for 
three years instead of for two they made a substantial m- 
crease. It was recognized that this was literally the last 
effort of France in the race. 

So many dangerous periods had now been safely passed 
that pacifists and well-meaning people began to believe 
that a great war never would come. But it had almost come 
in 1911, and more nearly in 1913, Both times the great 
struggle was avoided, it would now seem, because Germany 
was not yet ready. In another year she would be pre- 
pared. Then another crisis would come, again about 
Servia and the Balkans, and that time the utmost efforts 
of those who wished peace would not be sufficient to keep 
it. 



Alleged 
menace 
of Pan- 
Slavism 



The lull pre- 
ceding the 
storm 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Triple Entente: R. B. Mowat, Select Treaties and Docu- 
ments (ed. 1916), contains the texts of the Entente Cordiale, public 
and secret parts, and of the Anglo-Russian Agreement; Sir 
Thomas Barclay, Thirty Years' Anglo-French Reminiscences 
(1914); L. J. Jaray, La Politique Franco- Anglaise et V Arbitrage 
Internationale (1904); E. Lemonon, L'Europe et la Politique 
Britannique, 1882-1910 (1910); R. Millet, Notre Politique 
Exterieure de 1898-1905 (1905), hostile to Delcasse; Gilbert 
Murray, The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey (1915), de- 
fends; G. H. Perris, Our Foreign Policy and Sir Edward Grey's 
Failure (1912) opposed to the ententes; A. Tardieu, Questions 
Diplomatiques de VAnn^e 190 ^ (1905). 

Relations with Russia: The Willy-Nicky Correspondence, 



420 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

edited by Herman Bernstein (1918), to be supplemented by 
S. B. Fay, "The Kaiser's Secret Negotiations with the Czar, 
1904-5," American Historical Review, October, 1918; N. F. 
Grant, editor. The Kaiser's Letters to the Tsar (1920). 

The conflict over Morocco: P. Albin, Le ''Coup" d'Agadir 
(1912); H. Closs, Wesi-Marokko Deutsch (1911); G. Diercks, 
Die Marokkofrage und die Konferenz von Algeciras (1906); L. 
Maurice, La Politique Marocaine de V Allemagne (1916); E. 
Morel, Morocco in Diplomacy (1912), well documented, but 
strongly prejudiced against France and the Anglo-French policy, 
reissued as Ten Years oj Secret Diplomacy (1915); A, Tardieu, 
La Conference d' Algeciras (ed. 1917), best on subject, Le Mys- 
tere d'Agadir (1912), best account of; A. Wirth, Die Entschei- 
dung uher Marokko (1911). 




24. THE BRITIS 




EMPIRE IN 1914 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 

Gelegentlich der Ubergabe der vorstehenden Note woUen Euer 
Hochwohlgeboren miindlich hinzufugen, dass Sie beauftragt seien 
— falls Ihnen nicht inzwischen eine vorbehaltlose zustimmende 
Antwort der koniglichen Regierung zugekommen sein sollte — nach 
Ablauf der in der Note vorgesehenen, vom Tage und von der 
Stunde Ihrer Mitteilung an zu rechnenden 48 stundigen Frist, mit 
dem Personale der k. u. k. Gesandschaft Belgrad zu verlassen. 
Instruction of CotnsTT Berchtold to Baron von Giesl, about 
presenting the Austrian Note at Belgrade, July 22, 1914. 

Such had been the development of the poHtics of 
Europe. Ominous and terrible things loomed up ever 
more striking, and there were not wanting those who 
each year predicted a great war inevitable in the future. 
Yet, this seemed such a travesty upon civilization and the 
progress of mankind that many a zealous and earnest 
person contended in these later years that no great war 
could again take place, that war never paid, and that the 
dreadful losses certain to come would deter the principal 
nations from fighting. It was believed that arbitration 
would be used more and more in the future, that the 
Hague Tribunal, which had been erected in 1899, at the 
suggestion of the tsar, and to which shortly after the 
United States had brought the first case, would be able 
peaceably to settle disputes. Furthermore, it was often 
said that the whole tendency of politics recently had been 
to make governments more and more democratic and bring 
them more thoroughly under the control of the represen- 
tatives of the people ; that the commonalty in all countries 
were really bound together by ties recognized ever more 
clearly; that each year they better understood how wars 

421 



Possibility 
of a great 
war 



Democracy 
and peace 



422 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Alleged 
class inter- 
est and wars 



Immediate 
causes 



General and 

underlying 

causes 



were made by the upper classes in their own selfish class 
interests, that they were fought by the common people 
upon whom fell all the suffering and loss, but who got 
none of the benefits of victory; and that, therefore, the 
mass of the people, now that they had power in governing 
themselves, would not permit any more wars or give them 
support. Finally, it was believed by many that commerce 
and finance now bound together the nations so closely 
that powerful economic forces were making war impossible. 
There was much truth in all of these contentions, and 
perhaps had mankind been more fortunate and wiser, no 
great war need have come. But as one looks back now 
and considers things as they were, not as men hoped they 
were, it is evident that there were certain great causes tend- 
ing almost irresistibly to the awful disaster which came. 

The immediate causes of the Great War of 1914 were 
the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and 
the note that Austria-Hungary addressed to Servia 
thereupon. But great and larger causes had long been 
potently working. 

The great nations of Europe were by 1914 divided into 
two great hostile combinations, the Triple Alliance and 
the Triple Entente, armed to the teeth and constantly 
watching each other. Militarism had developed until 
in Europe there was the vastest accumulation of arms, 
munitions, and war supplies which had ever been got to- 
gether, the largest number of soldiers that had ever been 
trained for war, the greatest amount of military science 
and skill, and not a little desire to use in war what had been 
prepared for war. Certain consequences of the mere 
geographical shape, arrangement, and division of Europe 
made some nations hostile to others. The trend of events 
seemed to favor some nations of Europe more than 
the others, which caused military statesmen to believe 
that if their nations did not make war now they could 
have little chance in the future, Differences m birth-rat^ 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 423 



and growth of population made disparity, arrogance, and 
fear. The relations between Germany and England, and 
the rivalry between Teutons and Slavs, especially with 
respect to the Balkans, had for some years threatened a 
conflict. Above all, the character, the ambitions, the 
ideals, the purposes of the German people made war seem 
desirable to them, a good thing not to be shunned. Most 
of these causes affected and influenced all of the European 
powers, and for that reason in the early years of the struggle 
it seemed to many people in the United States that here 
was merely another contest brought about by rivalries and 
unwholesome ambitions, with one side no better than the 
other. Presently, however, it was seen that German 
designs had influenced and directed all the other factors; 
and in the end the opinion prevailed that blame should 
be placed upon the German people and their leaders. 

The growth of the great opposing combinations has al- 
ready been traced. By 1914 the German Empire, Austria- 
Hungary, and Italy still composed the Triple Alliance. For 
some time Italy had been attached to it principally through 
fear of what might happen if she left it, and her attitude 
in any great conflict was a matter of conjecture; but 
Rumania had long been secretly allied with Austria- 
Hungary, and more recently Turkey had been so closely 
attached to Germany's interest that it seemed very prob- 
able that any loss through Italy would be made good by 
her. On the other side were Great Britain, Russia, and 
France, held together more loosely, and held together 
principally through dread of the mighty and increasing 
greatness of the German Empire, with Russia sometimes 
drawn away for the moment by the influence of the kaiser 
upon the tsar. Whatever might be true of Italy and to 
a less extent of Russia, the two Teutonic powers on the 
one side, and Great Britain and France on the other, con- 
stantly drew closer together, and constantly watched their 
opponents with increasing suspicion and alarm. In both 



Great rival- 
ries and 
differences 



Triple 

Entente 

against 

Triple 

Alliance 



4@4 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Militarism 



Develop- 
ment of the 
Prussian 
army 



groups, and especially in England and France, many peo- 
ple bore their opponents no hostility and hoped that war 
never would come; but on both sides were those who 
constantly watched for the favorable moment to better 
their position, and constantly worked to oppose their 
opponents. Several dangerous situations had arisen, and 
always the two combinations seemed to drift into deeper 
enmity and graver danger of war. 

These great combinations had resulted not only from 
political developments, but partly from the growth and 
preparation of military power. In the nineteenth century 
there had been in Europe such a development of armies 
and military preparations as had never been seen before. 
In former times there had been great military states, 
Assyria, Sparta, Rome, overawing all their neighbors; but 
now almost every man in most of the great states of 
Europe had been trained as a soldier and was ready for 
the summons to come. 

The wars of the eighteenth century were carried on in 
Europe by professional soldiers, paid and supported by 
the governments, who kept them as standing armies in per- 
manent military establishments. Such armies were small 
as compared with the population of the countries that 
maintained them. Louis XIV terrified all Europe when 
he assembled 400,000 soldiers at a time when the popula- 
tion of France was 10,000,000. But during the nineteenth 
century these small armies of professional hired soldiers 
were given over. In 1813 a law passed in Prussia provided 
that a certain number of the young men of the nation 
should be trained as soldiers for a short period, after which 
like numbers should be trained in succession for the same 
short period, so that after a while a large number of all 
the young men should have been trained as soldiers, and 
in time of need could be called out for active service. This 
system was extended and perfected in Prussia until after a 
time a large portion of all Prussia's men had had mihtary 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 425 



training. It was because of this that Prussia so easily 
won her great triumphs over Austria and France. She 
had by far the largest number of well-trained soldiers of 
any state in the world. Enormous advantage came from 
this, because a large army could not be created quickly. 
War was becoming so elaborate and complicated that it 
was nearly hopeless for men without military training or 
organization to stand against an army well prepared. 

So great and so obvious was the advantage of Prussia, 
that in time all the neighbors of the German Empire 
adopted this system: France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and 
Russia. The extent to which the system of "universal" 
military service was adopted by each one depended upon 
the size of the population and the financial abihty of the 
nation to support gigantic military forces. Russia did not 
find it necessary to take all of her men, nor did the German 
Empire, but France, with much smaller population, and 
living directly by Germany, enrolled all her men physi- 
cally fit, and was by 1914 the classic example of the sys- 
tem. There all the young men, not deformed or too weak, 
when they arrived at the age established by law, went to 
the training camps for three years, and after their period 
of training entered the reserve. In 1914 the number of 
soldiers in the "standing army" of Germany was 870,000, 
while 4,000,000 more trained soldiers could, if necessary, 
be called; in France 670,000 were in the camps, and it was 
thought that 3,000,000 could follow. By this time the 
soldiers of the Continental armies numbered millions, with 
millions more in reserve. There had never been anything 
like it before, and it was beheved that another war would 
either be decided immediately in favor of that nation which 
could suddenly bring greatest forces to bear, or else all the 
contestants would soon be exhausted as a result of the 
stupendous cost. 

Nor was this all. With these vast military establish- 
ments went the preparation of war-supplies in incredible 



Growth of 
armies in 
Europe 



Great 

standing 

armies 



426 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Military 
equipment, 
prepara- 
tions, and 
spirit 



The Hague 
Peace Con- 
ferences 



quantities. Never before in the history of the world had 
there been so enormous an accumulation of rifles, cannon, 
machine guns, explosives, and death-dealing instruments 
of all kinds. The best brains and the greatest ingenuity 
in some of these countries went into the devising of more 
and more dreadful instruments of destruction. There 
was feverish activity and the most reckless expenditure 
to keep up in the race. Powerful weapons soon became 
obsolete and were replaced with others more terrible. To 
lag in the race might some time mean destruction by a 
more active rival. Preparations for the future were 
constantly made. Elaborate arrangements were prepared 
for sudden attack, and complete plans of campaign. 
Spies were sent out in time of peace, to collect infor- 
mation or disarrange plans. Railway systems were 
constructed for quickly moving troops, and "strategic 
railways" appeared, as along the Belgian frontier of Ger- 
many, where there were few passengers and little freight 
to be moved. And still more terrible, but as a natural 
consequence, powerful men who gave their careers to 
military service thought about military effectiveness so 
much and tried so hard to perfect their armies, that they 
came to think of war as a good thing, and to hope that 
there might some day be a chance to use the weapons so 
well prepared. In all of these things Germany took the 
lead and kept far ahead. When statesmen of other 
countries tried to bring about reduction of armament, and 
arrange plans for settling national disputes by peaceable 
means, Germany always opposed or refused. 

Some efforts were made to abate this activity, and 
there were not a few who dreamed of bringing war to an 
end. In 1898 Tsar Nicholas II invited the nations to 
consider the project of disarming. As he truly declared, 
increasing armaments and the expenses entailed threatened 
to destroy European civilization. In the next year what 
was known as the First Peace Conference assembled at 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 427 



The Hague. The German representative declared that 
in his country the army was no burden; and it was not 
possible to agree upon any scheme of reduction; but a 
permanent court of arbitration known as the Hague 
Tribunal, was established, to deal, at the request of 
powers concerned, with differences which they had been 
unable to settle by diplomatic negotiation. In 1907 a 
second Peace Conference met at The Hague. There 
was a larger attendance, and stronger efforts were now 
made to substitute peaceable arbitration for war, and so 
make possible the reduction of armaments. Again there 
was no success, and it was afterward stated that from 
Germany came the most effective opposition. A body of 
conventions was drawn up to regulate the conduct of war 
and forbid certain harsh methods and divers dreaded 
devices, like poisonous gases. These conventions were 
adopted, but again Germany made no actual change in 
the stern and terrible regulations contained in her Kriegs- 
hrauch im Landkriege (usages in war), which had been 
issued five years before. The Hague Conferences ac- 
complished little, but they are the principal monument 
to the Russian ruler who afterward perished so miserably 
as a result of war. And they were afterward seen to have 
been preliminary steps toward the forming of a league of 
nations to abolish all war. 

Because of mere geographical situation and the arrange- 
ment of outlets and frontiers some of the nations of 
Europe were at a disadvantage as compared with the 
others. They earnestly desired to get things that they, 
lacked, which could only be got by taking them away from 
rivals. Some countries were closed in from the sea by 
others, who could, if they should so wish, deny them outlet 
and strangle their economic life. Some nations had vast 
expanse of territory in which to increase their population 
and make themselves greater in the future. Others had 
restricted area and far less chance for any growth. 



Fruitless 
efforts to 
abolish war 



Geo- 
graphical 
factors 



4^8 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Russia, 
Austria- 
Hungary 



The Adri- 
atic, the 
Baltic, the 
Mediter- 
ranean 



Russia had immense territory, wanting good outlet. 
To the north she had ports in the Arctic region, which 
were far out of the way and most of them closed by ice 
during much of the year. Far to the east she had a good 
outlet at Vladivostok, which was likewise closed during 
winter, and also at the mercy of Japan. In the west she 
had ports on the Baltic Sea, but they were not only used 
with difficulty during some months in the winter, but the 
German Empire could stop all Baltic trade if ever she 
wished. In the south there were excellent ports on the 
Black Sea, and to this sea came most of Russia's com- 
merce, since most of the great Russian rivers emptied 
there; but the only exit from the Black Sea was through 
the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, narrow straits con- 
trolled absolutely by the Turks at Constantinople. It had 
been the age-long aspiration of Russians to get a good 
warm-water outlet and it had long been their passionate 
desire to win Constantinople, from which had come their 
religion and civilization, and which seemed to them a holy 
city. But if Russia succeeded in this, then some of the 
greatest ambitions of Germany might come to nothing, 
and Austria-Hungary would be largely in Russia's power. 
Not only did Austria-Hungary desire to expand south 
through the Balkans, but her great river, the Danube, 
emptied into the Black Sea, and much of her commerce 
went out past Constantinople. That is to say, if Russia 
succeeded in her ambition, then Austria-Hungary could 
be largely closed in and at Russia's mercy, while if Aus- 
tria got what she desired, then Russia could be at her 
mercy in like manner. 

There were many circumstances similar. Austria's 
other outlet was into the Adriatic, at Trieste and Fiume, 
but the end of the Adriatic was getting entirely under 
Italy's control. Germany, who could close in Russia 
on the Baltic, found her great trade routes in the North 
Sea and through the English Channel at the mercy of 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 429 



Great Britain who could shut them off if she wished. 
And all the nations with ports on the Mediterranean, the 
most important sea and the greatest water short-line in 
the world, found the Mediterranean held at both ends, 
at Suez and Gibraltar, by Great Britain. It was not 
that these outlets were closed and nations strangled or 
made economically dependent, but the fact that in some 
great struggle they could be. Statesmen thought of the 
future, and were filled with distrust. In time of peace 
all the seas controlled by Britain were used by all the 
nations as much as they wished, but during the Great 
War Britain's command of the sea at last brought Ger- 
many to her knees, just as already Russia had been 
destroyed partly because she had from the first been 
closed in by the German Empire and Turkey. Indeed, 
in 1911-12, durmg the Turco-ItaHan War, in which Russia 
had no part, Russia's grain fleet was completely stopped 
through the closing of the straits by Turkey. 

Just as great to some seemed the disadvantage of not 
having room for expansion. The English-speaking peo- 
ples, the Russians, Chinese, and Japanese, perhaps some of 
the South American peoples, had room in which to grow 
and increase their numbers. Even France, whose popula- 
tion was stationary, had a large colonial empire. But 
Germany's territory was small, and she had no good 
colonies or thinly peopled districts in which might grow 
up a Germany still greater. Her population was rapidly 
increasing, and some looked forward to the time when 
there would be 200,000,000 Germans in the Empire. Then 
France would be at a hopeless disadvantage. But when 
that time came, it seemed probable that the population 
of Russia might be 1,000,000,000, and then what chance 
would Germany have against her.'^ Nor could this dis- 
parity be avoided, for Russia had immense territories only 
thinly peopled, able to support many more, while beyond 
a certain number it did not seem possible that Germany 



Possible 
economic 
strangula- 
tion 



Room for 

growth of 
population 



430 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Birth-rate 
and growth 
of population 



Birth-rate 
and 

standard 
of living 



could support more in the limited area which she possessed. 
Later on, accordingly, the destiny of the world would be 
in the hands of great contestants, like Russia, the British 
Empire, the United States, perhaps Japan, with Germany 
relatively a minor power like France — unless, before this 
evil day came, Germany struck and took from others the 
territory which they had and which she needed so badly. 

Connected with this were differences in birth-rate and 
increase in population. In some countries the number of 
people was increasing more rapidly than in others, and, 
other things being equal, superior numbers would be sure 
to give greater military strength and power. It was 
largely because of this that France had lost the position 
of primacy she had once held in the affairs of Europe. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century her population 
was 27,000,000; in 1914 it was a little less than 40,000,000. 
In the early part of the nineteenth century there were in 
the countries which afterward made up the German 
Empire 24,000,000 people, but when the Great War began 
the population was estimated at about 68,000,000. 
During this same period the population of Great Britain 
had grown from 10,500,000 to 40,000,000 though durmg 
the same time that of Ireland had declined from 8,000,000 
to 4,500,000. The enemies of France, and some of her 
friends, said that France was decadent, that France was 
an old, tired nation, which, like a man or a woman late in 
life, was not possessed of the vigor and fullness that cause 
early marriages and large families and increase in num- 
bers. Actually, however, there had long been in France 
what had long been the case with the upper and more 
prosperous classes in almost every other country: a high 
standard of living and civilization, and a desire to hand 
down the same standard to the people of the next genera- 
tion. The land of France was divided among a great 
number of small proprietors, who could maintain them- 
selves in comfort and high standard, and bestow the same 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 431 



standard upon their children, provided their property 
did not have to be divided among many children. Ac- 
cordingly, the birth-rate was low. On the other hand, in 
Italy where the standard of living was low, the population 
increased so rapidly that large numbers of emigrants 
had to abandon a country that could not support them; 
and in Russia, despite an appalling infant mortality, 
population increased more rapidly still. In Germany, 
where the standard was high, it also increased rapidly, so 
that a large part of the population could only be supported 
by making goods to be exchanged with other nations for 
food. It was Germany's dearest desire to have more good 
territory in which to expand and increase her numbers; 
while the rapid increase, which she had, constantly made 
her more powerful, and more able to be arrogant and 
threatening to her neighbors. 

There were particular things which seemed to bode ill 
for the future, such as the feeling in France that gross 
injustice had been done by Germany in taldng Alsace- 
Lorraine, though the desire of the French people for a 
war of revenge had largely passed away, and by 1914 it 
was very probable that France would never go to war 
solely to win the "lost provinces" back. Italy wished 
much for the lands in which Italians lived, which had not 
been given to her at the time when her unity was achieved; 
but it was not probable that she would go to war to ob- 
tain them or be able to get them if she did. Far more 
important were the rivalry between Teuton and Slav in 
eastern Europe, and the relations between Germany and 
England in the west. 

The relations between Germany and England in earlier 
times had generally been good. But a great change came 
at the end of the century, when Germany, having built 
up the greatest military power in the world, seemed to 
desire naval supremacy also. In 1898 and in 1900 were 
passed two of the most important naval measures ever 



Birth-rate 

and 

expansion 



Interna- 
tional 
relations 



Germany 
and Great 
Britain 



432 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



German 

naval 

expansion 



Apprehen- 
sion in 
Britain 



Ineffectual 
efforts to 
reach an 
understand- 
ing 



sanctioned in any country. Huge appropriations were 
passed to be spent methodically according to plan over a 
number of years, at the end of which it was hoped that the 
German Empire would have a war fleet so powerful that 
in a contest the mightiest power would stake its very 
existence on the outcome. At once English leaders were 
alarmed. The British Government entered into the 
Entente Cordiale with France (1904) and settled all diflS- 
culties with Russia (1907). The people themselves were 
presently aroused at the prospect of great danger. More 
and more in the years that followed was the attention of 
people in Great Britain given to the growth and ambitions 
of Germany, Additional warships were built, and then, 
when for a while it seemed that Germany might still get 
ahead, huge appropriations were made and naval con- 
struction carried on with feverish haste. Many people 
believed that there was no danger; but many more thought 
that the British Empire was threatened by the greatest 
danger that had ever confronted it. There were not 
wanting some who feared that the Germans might strike 
without any declaration of war, and, evading the British 
fleet some misty night, suddenly throw into England a 
force which would destroy Great Britain completely, with- 
out any hope of redemption. It was necessary, then, 
to be perpetually on guard, to maintain overwhelming sea 
power, and perhaps raise a great army for defence. 

Some attempts were made to end this rivalry and sus- 
picion. The British Government tried to come to an un- 
derstanding with Germany about limiting the building of 
battleships, but though a temporary arrangement was 
arrived at, no real agreement could be reached, since 
Germany was not willing to give up her effort to rival 
Great Britain on the seas. The British people desired to 
avoid a conflict, and the British Government made a sin- 
cere effort to remove such differences as existed between 
the two nations. In doing this, large and generous con- 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 433 



cessions were made, especially with respect to the Bagdad 
Railway scheme; but it cannot be known what good results 
might have come, since the agreement was reached only 
a little before the Great War broke out. Meanwhile, 
such had been the revolution in affairs, that Great Britain, 
who had for nearly a century kept outside Continental 
affairs, now considered herself unable to stand without 
friends in Europe, her statesmen were constantly watching 
Germany's every move, and it had become the corner- 
stone of her foreign policy that in no circumstances 
must she ever allow France, her best friend, to be crushed 
by the German armies. 

Less acute and less evident, perhaps, was another and 
vaster rivalry, between the Teutonic peoples, especially 
the Germans, in central Europe, and the Slavic peoples, 
especially Russia, in the east, a contest which principally 
concerned Constantinople and the Balkans. For ages 
this contest had lasted. Once the Slavs had pushed the 
Teutons almost to the Elbe and the Rhine. Then the tide 
turned. The history of the Middle Ages in central 
Europe is to a considerable extent the story of the re- 
conquest of lands by the Germans from the Slavs. In this 
way was eastern Prussia built up, and it is thought that 
the Slavic continues to be the largest element in the 
Prussian people. In this way also was the power of 
Austria extended, and there were more Slavs in Austria 
than there were Germans and more Slavs in Hungary 
than Magyars. Poland had once been the great champion 
of the Slavs, but she had disappeared, and her place of 
leadership had been taken by the Empire of Russia. The 
rivalry now was concerned largely with the mastery of the 
Balkan Peninsula. 

In the days when the Eastern Roman Empire was 
decaying the Balkan Peninsula had been occupied largely 
by South Slavic peoples. In course of time they were 
overwhelmed and submerged by the Turks. In the nine- 



An under- 
standing 
almost 
reached 



Teuton and 
Slav 



The South 
Slavs and 
the Balkans 



434 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Russia, 
leader of 
the Slavs 



Germany, 
the Balkans, 
Asiatic 
Turkey 



Asia Minor 



teenth century they and the Greeks gained their freedom 
once more. To this freedom they had all been helped by 
Russia, to whom they looked as their protector and the 
great leader of their race. Russia desired to protect them 
or perhaps some day incorporate them in a great Pan- 
Russian domain, and she held these feelings not only 
because she was ambitious but because she felt the ties 
of religion and race : they were all of them Slavic in blood 
and they held the Greek Catholic faith. Also Russia 
greatly desired to have Constantinople and an outlet on 
the Mediterranean. This would never be possible, per- 
haps, unless she controlled the Balkans. 

These ambitions of Russia conflicted directly with what 
had come to be the first ambition of the Germanic peoples, 
and their best chance of founding a greater empire. 
There was no territory in Europe into which the Germans 
could expand without taking it away from some neighbor 
as the result of a war; and of colonies, England and France 
had taken almost all of the best that were to be had. 
There did seem to be some possibility of expansion in 
South America and in the Far East, but for the present the 
Monroe Doctrine debarred Germany from taking Latin 
American countries, and after the Russo-Japanese War 
(1904-5), European acquisition in China came to an end, 
since this was now opposed by Japan. It might be 
th,at some day Germany could take away the colonial 
dominion of France, or even the far-flung possessions of the 
British Empire ; but if these things came they must be the 
result of a victorious war, won by greater Germany in the 
future. One inviting field remained, and that was in the 
domain of Turkey, mostly in Asia Minor, which was thinly 
peopled and backward now under the rule of the Turk, 
but which had once been a seat of civilization, populous, 
important, and wealthy. Under German rule it might 
come to be so again. 

Accordingly, the German Government had cultivated 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 435 



good relations with the Turks, and had recently become 
so influential in their government that Turkey was be- 
coming an appendage of the German alliance. But 
in order that the German Empire might have control of the 
Turkish dominions it seemed necessary that the Dual 
Monarchy and Germany together should control the Bal- 
kan Peninsula which lay in between. This suited very 
well the schemes of Austria Hungary who desired to 
extend to the south. Gradually the plan took shape. 
The two principal members of the Triple Alliance were to 
dominate the Balkans and thence get control of the 
Turkish Empire and so build up across "Middle Europe" 
an empire which would extend from the North Sea to 
the Persian Gulf. To hold it together, to carry on a great 
trade with profit, to defend it in time of war, a railroad 
must bind all the parts. Already most of such a railroad 
existed. From the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic 
lines ran to Berlin, then to Vienna and Budapest, thence 
to Belgrade, and on to Constantinople. The Germans 
wished to extend this line of communication by building 
the "Bagdad Railway," which, starting on the shore of the 
Bosporus opposite Constantinople, would run across Asia 
Minor and across ancient Mesopotamia to the city of 
Bagdad, so famed in the Arabian Nights, and thence on 
to the Persian Gulf, while a branch would run southward 
along the Mediterranean past Egypt to the Arabian cities 
of Mohammed. 

Realization of this scheme of Middle Europe would 
make it impossible to fulfil the greater ambitions of the 
Slavs, and it was therefore strongly opposed by Russia. 
The field in which these conflicting ambitions most clashed 
was the Balkan Peninsula, the mastery of which was in- 
dispensable to success for either side. Hence the Balkans 
became the principal danger-spot of Europe. Twice did 
a great war almost break out because of disputes over this 
district. In 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and 



Mittel- 
Europa and 
the Bagdad 
Railway 



Rivalry 
in the 
Balkans 



436 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Balkan 
crises 



The Ger- 
mans 



Herzegovina. Russia strongly objected, but Germany 
stood beside her ally, and Russia yielded, suffering thus 
a diplomatic defeat. In 1912-13 another crisis developed 
when the small Balkan nations overthrew Turkey, took 
from her almost all of her territory in Europe, and then 
fought among themselves in dividing it up. On this oc- 
casion the Germans, and especially the Austrians, suffered 
loss, since the power of Turkey seemed to be destroyed, 
and Servia, Austria's bitterest foe, extended her territory 
and became more ambitious. It seemed now that Russia 
and the Triple Entente had the greatest influence in the 
Balkans, The subject Slavic peoples in the Dual Mon- 
archy became restless, and hoped that some day they 
could be independent or else join the Servian kingdom. 
Worst of all, if a hostile Servia remained independent, 
there could scarcely be a Middle Europe with through 
railroad communication from Hamburg to Bagdad, since 
it was almost necessary that this railroad should run 
across Servia up the valley of the Morava River. This 
was indeed the cause which led directly to the war. The 
Teutonic powers were determined that an independent Ser- 
via should not stand in their way. On the other hand, it 
was nearly certain that if Russia allowed Servia to be 
crushed, then her great hopes must come to an end. 
Hence there were endless plots and constant watching to 
see that neither side gained any advantage. 

The last and the greatest of the causes of the war was 
Germany herself. The character, the ambitions, the 
ideals of her rulers and her people made a great war prob- 
able whatever other causes existed. The Germans, 
from rapid and mighty success, had become selfish, cynical, 
hard, steeped in materialism, and filled with belief that 
they were superior and high above others. No people had 
developed so greatly in so short a time as the Germans 
since the founding of their empire. Just before the war 
they were surpassed in manufacturing only by the United 



^ 




25. SUPPOSED 



^ 



Central Europe and its Annex, in the Near East 
(Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey) 



1:^^>$$^ Territory occupied by Central Powers 
w^mm Germany's Main Route to the East 

(Berlin-Bagdad, Berlin-Hodeida, Berlin-Cairo-Cape) 
— — Additional Routes 

(Berlin-Trieste, Berlin-Saloniki-Athens, Berlin-Constantza-Constantinople) 
■"■ Portions under construction 




ERMAN PLAN 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 437 



States, in commerce only by Great Britain, they were the 
strongest mihtary power in the world, they were building 
one of the greatest navies, their population and national 
wealth were increasing in amazing manner. They had 
succeeded because of high intelligence, industry, and their 
excellent organization. But they had also succeeded by 
force and by fraud and by might. And as the years went 
on, their character and outlook underwent a notable 
change. 

Other peoples have believed themselves to be the 
greatest and the best in the world — the Greeks and the 
Romans once, the British, the French, the Russians, the 
Japanese, and the people of the United States. But in 
modern times there has been no such extreme belief as that 
which was cherished by the Germans. "The Teutons are 
the aristocracy of humanity," said a well-known writer. 
"The Teutonic race is called to encircle the earth with its 
rule, to exploit the treasures of nature and of human 
labor, and to make the passive races servient elements in 
its cultural development." He declared that the great 
work of the world had been done by men of Teutonic race, 
that Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, and Voltaire were actually 
of Teutonic strain, and that Alexander the Great and 
Julius Caesar were of the Teutonic type. "Whoever has 
the characteristics of the Teutonic race is superior." Such 
teachings were spread broadcast through the German 
Empire in popular form, and after a while generally be- 
lieved in. 

Above all did the German people believe that they were 
superior in war to all others. They had humbled all with 
whom they had fought. There were still other and greater 
foes, but the reckoning would come with them also. An 
accounting would come with Russia, and many Ger- 
mans looked eagerly forward to "the day," when the 
British Empire was to be laid low by the valor of their 
arms. Long-continued militarism had accustomed the 



Belief in 
racial super- 
iority 



Glorification 
of war 



438 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



German 
success in 
previous 
wars 



Arrogance 
and bound- 
less ambi- 
tion 



Germans to ideas of war; great success in their recent 
wars, confident belief in their superiority and future suc- 
cess caused many to believe that war was a good thing 
in itself. "Perpetual peace is a dream," wrote Field- 
Marshal von Moltke in 1880, " war is part of the eternal 
order instituted by God." Others declared that war was 
a part of the struggle for survival of the fittest, which, they 
said, was everywhere and always going on in the evolution 
of things. Through war it was that the superior German 
people would triumph over other, inferior nations. And 
as a result of the victories to come Germany would take 
away from the vanquished their possessions, which it was 
more fittmg that she should have. It would be better 
for the world if Germans possessed France and parts of 
Russia and wide domains everywhere, since then the 
greatest and the best of peoples would have chance for 
development larger and freer. 

As Germany became greater and stronger each year, as 
belief in the glorious destiny of the Germans was preached 
and taught in the schools and everywhere circulated in 
cheap and popular writings, as Germans believed more in 
the goodness of war and in their invincible army and navy, 
their ambition and arrogance became boundless. Not 
only military men but many others dreamed fondly of the 
mighty victories to come, and books were published con- 
taining maps of the world with the best parts under Ger- 
man rule. All this was well expressed in the writings of 
General von Bernhardi, especially in his book, Deutsch- 
land und der Ndchste Krieg {Germany and the Next War), 
published in 1911. He maintained that war was a thing 
excellent in itself. Through great wars would Germany's 
future be assured. First "France must be so completely 
crushed that never again can she come across our path"; 
then would come the reckoning with England. The next 
war would be for Weltmacht oder TJntergang, world-power or 
downfall. And so in the end it was. 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 439 



Along with this materiahsm, this ambition, this belief 
in the goodness of war, and the great plans which were 
cherished, went gradually a change in character, which 
affected many persons with a terrible perversion, for a 
while not understood by outsiders. Old maxims, often 
preached before and often abandoned as people improved, 
were revived now and strengthened. Since war was 
so good, force was the deciding factor, and might made 
right. Since the Germans were superior, and their aims 
for the good of the world, whatever they did to secure their 
ends was right, the end justified the means. Since the 
Germans were superior, a particular code existed for them: 
they were not bound by ordinary moral laws. The old 
teachings of Christ, that mercy and mildness should be 
shown, and that men should do by others as they would 
have others do unto them, were openly scoffed at by 
teachers who proclaimed that Germans were supermen, who 
should, by force or fraud or any means, obtain mastery 
over inferior people. Cruelty, terror, hardness of heart 
might always be employed by Germans in a coolly scien- 
tific and deliberate way to ensure the success which was 
theirs by right. Nor need promises be kept or treaties 
observed, if such observance hindered success. 

These teachings were widely proclaimed and often 
repeated, but they attracted little attention outside of 
Germany. For the most part they were so different from 
what humane people allowed themselves to think of or 
tried to believe that it seemed then incredible that Ger- 
mans could deliberately entertain them. But in Germany 
they were received with earnest attention, and made 
greater impression as time went on. They were probably 
the greatest reason, after all, why the other factors that 
tended toward a European conflict actually developed 
into war. They were also the principal reason why, after 
the Great War began, the greater part of the world turned 
from Germany with such horror and loathing. 



Old doc- 
trines 
terrible 
again 



Effects of 
these doc- 
trines 



440 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Drifting 
toward a 
great war 



Sarajevo 
and the 
Austrian 
note, 1914 



The ten 
demands 



So in the years after 1870, and especially after 1900, 
many factors in Europe tended to bring on a struggle of 
nations. Several times a great war nearly came to pass, 
but each time it was averted. By 1913, however, condi- 
tions had become such that it would be almost impossible 
to avoid a great conflict if another occasion arose. We 
know now, what was hidden then, that the Teutonic 
powers were at last fully determined to secure certain 
things, especially in the Balkans. If they could, they 
would get them without war. They were ready to fight 
for them if they must fight. 

The immediate cause of the war developed from a 
single episode. June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdi- 
nand, heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, and his 
wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. 
The assassins were Bosnians, but the affair at once took 
on an ominous aspect when it was known that Austria- 
Hungary considered the crime to have been plotted in 
Servia with the knowledge of the government at Belgrade. 
It was rightly suspected that opportunity would now be 
seized to reduce Servia to the dependence which Germany 
and Austria desired. The worst suspicions were con- 
firmed when, about a month later, July 24, a note was 
addressed to the Servian Government, declaring that it had 
acted in hostile way toward its neighbor, that it was a 
source of danger, and that evidently the infamous murder 
of the archduke had resulted largely therefrom. Ac- 
cordingly, ten demands were presented which must be 
acceded to in full within forty-eight hours. One of these 
demands was that Servia should remove officials "whose 
names and deeds the Austro-Hungarian Government re- 
serve to themselves the right of communicating"; while 
another was that Austro-Hungarian representatives be 
permitted to take part in court proceedings in Servia 
and in measures undertaken there with respect to those 
engaged in activities against the Dual Monarchy. 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 441 



At once it was the opinion of those who read the note 
that it had been so drafted as not to be acceptable. Sir 
Edward Grey, British secretary for foreign affairs, and 
one of the ablest and best diplomats in Europe, declared 
that he had never seen so formidable a document ad- 
dressed to an independent state. If Servia yielded what 
was now asked she would forego her sovereignty and 
independence, and become in effect a dependency of the 
power to whom she yielded. If this took place, then 
Austria, and with her the German Empire, would secure 
in the Balkans the supremacy for which they had so long 
striven, especially the vital advantage of controlling 
Servia and a part of the route of the railway to Con- 
stantinople. No state can retain its sovereignty and 
allow representatives of a foreign power to take part in the 
business of its law courts, and if any power promised un- 
conditionally to dismiss such officials as were afterward 
to be named, not only would it submit to a demand 
subversive of its independence but it would be possible for 
the foreign power to cause it to remodel its government in 
such manner as to render it entirely submissive. 

Servia at once appealed to Russia for support. Ser\aans 
could count on the sympathy of Russia, and it was prob- 
able that Russia would not stand aside and see Servia 
crushed and Germany and Austria obtain immediate 
preponderance in the Balkans. Austria unaided would 
probably be no match for Russia, but she would certainly 
be supported by the German Empire. It was now as 
proper and fundamental a policy for Germany to refuse 
to allow Austria-Hungary to be destroyed as it was for the 
British Empire to be determined to give France support. 
Accordingly, men believed that such a note would never 
have been dispatched from Vienna without the knowledge 
and approval of Berlin. The German authorities an- 
nounced that they approved the contents of the note, 
but declared that they had not known those contents be- 



The inde- 
pendence of 
Servia at 
stake 



Danger of 
a general 
conflict 



442 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Gerinan 
Government 
promises 
Austria- 
Hungary 
support in 
advance 



Austria 
makes war 
on Servia 



forehand. Strictly this may have been true. But it is 
now certain that Count Berchtold, Austrian minister of 
foreign affairs, who had determined upon a bold stroke, 
had obtained from Germany general promise of sup- 
port for whatever policy Austria undertook. July 5 the 
German Government secretly declared: "Austria must 
judge what is to be done to clear up her relation to Servia; 
whatever Austria's decision may turn out to be, Austria 
can count with certainty upon it, that Germany will stand 
behind her as an ally and friend." But bad as it would 
be if Russia came to the help of Servia, and Germany to 
the support of Austria-Hungary, the mischief would not 
stop there. France was bound to support Russia by 
the terms of the military convention, and it was her 
primary interest not to abandon Russia, unless Russia was 
making wicked and wanton aggression. And if France 
were drawn in, it was most probable that before long 
England would come to her support. Then a great 
European war would have begun, and it was impossible 
to tell how far it might afterward extend. Accordingly, 
those statesmen who desired to avert such catastrophe 
now bent all their efforts to quenching the fire that had 
been started. 

In the terrible Twelve Days, July 24 to August 4, many 
efforts were made to settle the affair and keep peace. The 
British and French ministers in Belgrade urged Servia to 
return a satisfactory reply. The Servian Government 
humbled itself to the dust and accepted most of the de- 
mands, not completely yielding to those which threatened 
its independence, though offering to refer the decision of 
them to the Hague Tribunal. Austria refused to con- 
sider the reply, and declared war on Servia, July 28. At 
once an invasion began. And now Russia appeared upon 
the scene. The day before, the tsar had declared: "Russia 
will in no case disinterest herself in the fate of Servia." 
The tsar's council had already decided to mobilize part 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 443 



of the Russian army against Austria, if necessary. Mean- 
while, strong representations were made. 

Every hour the menace of war grew more dreadful. The 
other Great Powers now bent themselves to keeping the 
peace between Austria and Russia. Great Britain, France, 
and Italy tried to do it in one way; Germany tried it in 
another. In the first group England took the lead. Sir 
Edward Grey proposed that a conference of the four 
powers be held to mediate between Russia and Austria- 
Hungary and work for a satisfactory solution; but with 
such a scheme Germany would have nothing to do, saying 
that she could not take part in bringing her ally before a 
European tribunal. Germany had a plan very different. 
She attempted to terrify Russia by threats, and so prevent 
her supporting Servia's cause. The dispute, she said, was 
an affair merely between Austria and Servia; no outside 
party should intervene; any such intercession "would 
precipitate inconceivable consequences." In Russia and 
in Germany military leaders now secretly urged on prepa- 
rations for war, so as to take the other at a disadvantage, 
the measures of each one driving the other still further. 
The German emperor promised to use his influence to 
bring about a satisfactory understanding between Austria 
and Russia, but the German ambassador in St. Petersburg 
was instructed to say that Russian military measures 
would be answered by mobilizing the German army, and 
"mobilization means war." July 29, the German em- 
peror telegraphed to the tsar that it was perfectly pos- 
sible for Russia to "remain a spectator" in the Austro- 
Servian war. Next day he said the tsar must decide: 
"You have to bear the responsibility for war or peace." 
Germany probably wished that a war be avoided, and 
preferred peace, so long as she and her ally got what 
they asked for; otherwise they were quite willing to fight. 
On the contrary. Great Britain and France, and, to some 
extent, Russia, earnestly wished to avoid war, and were 



Austria, 

Germany, 

Russia 



Kaiser 
and tsar 



444 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Great 
War begins: 
Germany 
declares war 
on Russia 



Germany 
declares war 
on France 



trying hard to bring about a compromise and satisfactory 
arrangement. Austria would make no compromise what- 
ever, and Germany was bound by the secret promise to 
support her. 

Meanwhile, Austrian armies continued their march into 
Servia. The protests of Russia effected nothing. Then 
on the night of July 29, almost at the same moment, 
Russian and Austrian armies were mobilized against each 
other. Face to face with the dread conflict Austria seemed 
to hesitate. Then Germany stepped forward, and set- 
tled the affair herself. Her diplomats were thrust aside 
by the Great General Staff, which now got control. Rus- 
sia, more and more threatened by Germany, was mobiliz- 
ing all her forces. July 31 the German Government 
demanded that Russia stop all mobilization within twelve 
hours, and France was asked what she would do if a Russo- 
German war were begun. Russia returned no answer. 
August 1 the German Empire declared war upon Russia. 

Neither England nor France had much direct interest 
in Balkan affairs, and both of them greatly wished peace. 
But the hour of fate was at hand for France. The Ger- 
man ambassador in Paris was bidden to insist on a reply 
to the German inquiry, and it is now known that he was 
also instructed, in case France promised to leave Russia 
to her fate, to demand that the French hand over to the 
German authorities certain strong fortresses in pledge. 
But the reply was that "France would do that which her 
interests dictated," Two days later, August 3, Germany 
declared war upon France, falsely affirming that France 
had attacked her first. Actually the French, in their 
great desire to avoid war, had drawn their forces back 
some seven miles from their frontier. But also in this 
moment of destiny the French people stood up in un- 
conquerable spirit before the greatest danger that had 
ever approached them. 

Thus the Continent was engulfed in war. Great Britain 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 445 



was close to the brink. More than any other power had 
England striven for peace. Every resource had been 
tried. It was not improbable that France and Russia 
would be crushed, and British statesmen realized, what 
many of their people did not clearly see yet, that if France 
were crushed, then Britain's best friend would be gone, 
and Britain would be left, perhaps, to face alone a mightier 
Germany in the future. It would be better to support 
France now. Yet the British people and parliament 
wished to stay out of the war, and France could get no 
assurance that England would give her assistance. Al- 
most certainly England would have come to the help of 
France before the conflict was over, but it might well be 
that her help would have come too late. August 2 a prom- 
ise was given that the British fleet would protect French 
shipping and the north coast of France, and afterward 
this would undoubtedly have been regarded by Germany 
as an unfriendly act, whenever it suited her to do so. But 
meanwhile Germany was striving to keep Britain out of 
the war, and Sir Edward Grey had already declared that if 
Germany and Austria would make "any reasonable pro- 
posal" for keeping the peace, and it became clear that 
France and Russia were not trying to keep it, then Great 
Britain "would have nothing more to do with the conse- 
quences." 

An event now occurred which caused Great Britain 
to enter the struggle at once. Germany violated the 
neutrality of Belgium. The plans of the German General 
Staff called for the immediate crushing of France and then 
afterward attacking Russia alone. If this was to succeed, 
there must be no delay. But the frontier between Ger- 
many and France was not long, and it was so strongly 
fortified that it seemed probable much time would be lost 
in getting through. Between Germany and France also 
lay the neutralized countries of Switzerland, Luxemburg, 
and Belgium. Both Luxemburg and Belgium afford 



Germany 
and Great 
Britain 



Violation 
the neu- 
trality of 
Belgium 



of 



446 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The easy 
road into 
France 



"A scrap of 
paper" 



easy and admirable entrance into the most vital part of 
France. It was true, the inviolability of the territory 
of these small states was guaranteed by treaties which 
had long been regarded as sacred and as part of the public 
law of Europe, and the German Empire was engaged to 
uphold them. Nevertheless, Germany at once began 
pouring an enormous force through Luxemburg and de- 
manded that the Belgian Government allow free passage. 
One of the finest things in history was the splendid way 
in which Belgium, suddenly asked to forfeit her neutraliza- 
tion and threatened with terrible fate if she refused, bravely 
called upon the German Government to keep its promise, 
and then tried to resist the German armies, which struck 
her at once. Immediately Belgium appealed to the Great 
Powers; Russia, France, and Great Britain promised such 
help as they could give. 

The position of Belgium is such that if she were in the 
hands of a strong power hostile to Great Britain, then the 
very existence of Britain would be threatened. It had 
therefore long been a cardinal principle of British states- 
manship that the neutrality and independence of Belgium 
must be maintained. Now, August 4, the British am- 
bassador in Berlin was instructed to present an ultimatum 
demanding that Germany withdraw her forces from Bel- 
gium at once. The chancellor of the Empire, Von Beth- 
mann-Hollweg, refused, saying bitterly that England was 
going to war for Belgian neutrality, "just for a scrap of 
paper." Thus did the highest official of Germany speak 
of the treaty obligations of his government. Before the 
Reichstag he admitted that Germany had done wrong — 
"necessity knows no law," "From this admission," said a 
German writer afterward, "neither God nor the devil will 
ever set us free." At midnight of August 4, when the 
time of the ultimatum had expired, Great Britain entered 
the war. 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 447 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Militarism and the rivalry of nations: G. H. Ferris, A Short 
History of War and Peace (1911), for an elementary introduc- 
tion; H. N. Brailsford, The War of Steel and Gold, a Study of the 
Armed Peace (1914); P. Camena d'Almeida UArmee Allemande 
avant et pendant la Guerre de 1914^-1918 (1920); A Gauvain, 
L'Europe avant la Guerre (1917); General C. von der Goltz, 
Das Volk in Waffen, trans, by F, A. Ashworth, A Nation in Arms 
(1915); E. F. Henderson, Germany's Fighting Machine (1914); 
Walter Lippman, The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915); Munroe 
Smith, Militarism and Statecraft (1918); J. Poirier, U Evolution 
de VArmee Allemande de 1888-1913 (1914); J. T. W. Newbold, 
How Europe Armed for War (1916); E. A. Pratt, The Rise of 
Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833-1914- (1916); and for 
general considerations on war and national rivalry. Dr. G. F. 
Nicolai, Die Biologic des Krieges (1918), trans, by C. A. and J. 
Grande, The Biology of War (1919); H. H. Powers, The Things 
Men Fight For (1916), a very suggestive book. 

Pacifism: Norman Angell [R. N. A. Lane,] The Great Illusion 
(ed. 1914), a book which was the cause of considerable mislead- 
ing and delusion; G. G. Coulton, The Main Illusions of Pacificism 
(1916). 

German spirit and ambition: for a brief statement the most 
illuminating account is J. A. Cramb, Germany and England 
(1914), a book of rare beauty and power; Friedrich von Bern- 
hardi, Deutschland und der Nachste Krieg (1911), trans, by A. 
H. Powles, Germany and the Next War (1912) ; Georges Bourdon, 
VEnigme Allemande (1913); H. S. Chamberlain, trans, by 
John Lees, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. 
(1911); Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitschen 
(1918); Wallace Notestein and E. E. Stoll, Conquest and Kultur 
(1917) and Anonymous, Out of Their Own Mouths (1917), for 
collections of extracts and quotations translated; Jacques 
Riviere, UAllemand (1918); Otto-Richard Tannenberg, Gross- 
Deutschland (1911); R. G. Usher, Pan-Germanism (1913). Also 
for German plans of expansion: H. Andrillon, U Expansion de 
VAllemagne (1914), concerning economic expansion; S. Grum- 
bach, Das Annexionistische Deutschland (1917). 

Nationalism: E. B. Krehbiel, Nationalism, War and Society 
(1916); A. J. Toynbee, Nationality and the War (1915). 

Diplomatic negotiations just before the war: the best and 



448 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

most convenient collection for ordinary use continues to be 
Collected Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the 
European War (1914), a publication of the British Government 
but allowed, even by hostile critics, to contain translations of 
the various " books" and "papers" of the warring governments 
which are accurate and fair; E. R. O. von Mach, Official Diplo- 
matic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the European War 
(1916), which contains photographic facsimiles of the first 
and most important collections of documents in the original 
languages — the footnotes, which caused the publishers to with- 
draw the volume from circulation, are to be used with caution; 
J. B. Scott, Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the 
European War, 2 vols. (1916), a larger collection. The govern- 
ments of the Central Powers at first gave little information 
about their actions in these days, but recently some very full 
and valuable collections of documents have been published, 
especially for Germany, Die Deutschen Dokumente zum Kriegs- 
ausbruck, ed. by Karl Kautsky, 4 vols. (1919); and for Austria- 
Hungary, Diplomatische AktenstUcke zur Vorgeschichte des 
Krieges, 19U, ed. by Dr. Richard Gooss, 3 vols. (1919). All 
these documents, together with much subsidiary material, have 
been analyzed by S. B. Fay, "New Light on the Origins of the 
World War," American Historical Review, July, October, 1920, 
January, 1921, the best and most recent account. For the 
diplomatic negotiations also J. W. Headlam, The History of 
Twelve Days, July S^th to August Uh, 1914 (1915); M. R. Price, 
The Diplomatic History of the War (no date, ? 1914), containing 
valuable documents but much vitiated by the prejudice of the 
author; E. C. Stowell, The Diplomacy of the War of lOlJ,, (1915). 
Attempted explanations, justifications, or condemnations: E. 
P. Barker and others. Why We Are at War: Great Britain s Case 
(1914); Colonel Bauer, Konnten Wir den Krieg Vermeiden, 
Gewinnen, Abbrechen? (1919), by one of the officers of Luden- 
dorff's staff; Harold Begbie, Vindication of Great Britain (1916) ; 
Sir E. Cook, How Britain Strove for Peace (1914); Deutschland 
und der Weltkrieg (1915), by several authors, trans, by W. W. 
Whitelock, Modern Germany in Relation to the Great War (1916); 
H. A. L. Fisher, The War, Its Causes and Its Issues (1914); Dr. 
Richard Grelling, J* Accuse: von einem Deutschen (1915), Das 
Verbrechen, translated as The Crime (1917—); J. W. Headlam, 
The German Chancellor and the Outbreak of War (1917); H. F. 
Helmolt, Die Geheime Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges (1914); 



CAUSES OF THE GREAT WAR 449 

Gottlieb von Jagow, Ursachen und Ausbruch des Weltkrieges 
(1919) ; Earl Loreburn, Haw the War Came{l919) ; Ramsay Muir, 
Britain's Case Against Germany (1914); Paul Rohrbach, Der 
Krieg und die Deutsche Politik (1914), trans, by P. H. Phillipson, 
Germany's Isolation (1914); J. H. Rose, The Origins of the War 
(1914); T. Schiemann, Wie England eine Verstdndigung mit 
Deutschland Verhinderte (1915). 

Belgium and Luxemburg: Louis Renault, trans, by Frank 
Carr, First Violations of International Law by Germany: Luxem- 
bourg and Belgium (1917) ; Charles de Visscher, La Belgique et lea 
Juristes Allemands (1916), trans, by E. F. Jourdain (1916); 
George Renwick, Luxembourg (1913). 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE GREAT WAR 

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. 
^neid, i. 462. 

Ja der Krieg verschlingt die Besten. 

Schiller, "Das Siegesfest" (1803). 

. . . the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place; and in the sky 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly. 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the Dead. Short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders fields. 

Lt.-Col. John McCrae, "In Flanders Fields" (1915). 

_ The Great War, as it has been called, perhaps for want 

■W^ar of ^ better name, began August 1, 1914, with the declara- 

tion of war by the German Empire against Russia. This 
was followed two days later by the German declaration 
against France. Next day came the declaration of Great 
Britain against Germany. The conflict had been made 
nearly inevitable by the declaration of war by Austria- 
Hungary against Servia, and against Austria also now 
the Powers of the Entente soon issued declarations. August 
23, Japan declared war upon Germany in fulfilment, as she 
said, of the terms of her alliance with Britain. By the 
end of the summer all Europe with the exception of 
Spain, Holland, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, and 
some of the nations of the Balkans, the outlying and 

450 



THE GREAT WAR 



451 



less important parts, was involved in the most destructive 
conflict in the history of the world. Relatively more ter- 
rible in the end, were the death struggle between Rome and 
Carthage, the ravages of the Huns and of the Mongols, 
the Hundred Years War in France, the Thirty Years War 
in Germany, and even the Napoleonic wars; but these 
struggles were on a smaller scale or else produced their 
fearful results because they continued through a great 
many years. The war which began in 1914 lasted little 
more than four years, but in that short time it brought a 
great part of the civilized world to the brink of destruc- 
tion, and because of the enormous numbers engaged and 
the fearful instruments of destruction employed, more 
men were killed or maimed, it is said, than in all the wars 
preceding, since the beginning of the Christian era. 

It was evident to all at the beginning of the struggle 
that the Germans and their allies had great advantage 
from wonderful preparation and from striking suddenly 
at their chosen time, but it was widely believed that if 
only France and Russia could endure the assault for a 
short period, until they could assemble all their force, 
and especially until Britain, unprepared for the war, could 
bring her resources to bear, that the Allies of the Entente, 
because they had the greater resources in wealth and 
population, had the better chance to win — that time was 
on their side. This was not entirely true. It is certain 
that the Germans expected a short war, for they had 
much reason to anticipate an easy, overwhelming triumph. 
But when their first rush had been checked, there were 
periods in the years that followed when their advantages 
and resources were so superior that time seemed entirely 
with them. 

The Teutonic powers, especially Germany, possessed 
certain advantages, which were understood elsewhere 
more clearly as the conflict progressed. The Germans 
had the largest number of well-drilled, thoroughly trained. 



The most 
destructive 
of conflicts 



The op- 
posing 
forces 



The Ger- 
man army 



452 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The German 
officers 



German 
commanders 



intelligent, and devoted soldiers possessed by any power 
in the world. France had as brave and as skilful soldiers, 
but not so great a population and not so large an army 
potentially or immediately available. Russia had great 
numbers of men, but scant facilities for training and 
equipping them as soldiers. Germany could put into the 
field in a short time 4,000,000 soldiers, without superiors 
in the world. Military tradition and years of training 
were needed to make such fighting men as hers, and having 
them thus ready for a sudden stroke, it was extremely 
probable that her army could conquer any combination, 
while her enemies were trying to create forces to fight her. 

If it required two or three years to make well-trained 
soldiers, it took much longer to produce capable oflficers. 
Without skilled officers to lead the men no great war can 
be won, and without a large force of reserve officers no 
conflict can long be carried on with any success. One 
reason for the failure of the Russian armies after the first 
year was that then most of the trained officers with whom 
Russia began the war were dead or in German prison 
camps. In 1914 Germany, of all the powers, had the 
largest number of trained officers, and by far the largest 
number of officers in reserve. 

Much more difficult than the getting of capable officers 
or well-trained soldiers was the building up of general 
military organization, creating a general staff, and finding 
commanders who could lead large numbers of men. All 
the Great Powers had attempted to do this, and some of 
them hke Russia, and especially France, had achieved 
much success. But in Germany the prevalence of military 
atmosphere and the long-continued military tradition 
and devotion to the science of war had given the largest 
number of higher commanders possessed by any nation. 
In the end it was seen that no German general displayed 
that sort of genius which entitled him to be remembered 
among the first military captains of the world, none like 



THE GREAT WAR 



453 



the great Frenehman, Focli; but no other power had so 
many leaders of corps and di^aslons and armies who had all 
the advantages given by patient study of military things. 
In this, the result of generations of work, Germany had 
something which none of her enemies could create in a 
short time when the need came. 

When the conflict began Germany had the largest 
amount of military equipment in the world, and the 
greatest facilities for immediately adding to her stock. 
Men and leaders are indispensable for winning wars, 
but the bravest soldiers only give themselves up to slaugh- 
ter if, without proper weapons, they fight against enemies 
well equipped. Millions of Russians were to fall because 
the Russian armies were often half armed. Modern ar- 
maments are very different from those of earlier times. 
In the Middle Ages weapons were comparatively simple, 
easier to make, and less expensive. Many a man had his 
sword or bow then, and armies could be quickly raised 
because men could quicldy get weapons and assemble to- 
gether. But the scientific and industrial development of 
modern times, especially the latter part of the nineteenth 
century, introduced many strange, complicated, and 
costly devices, which were not generally in the possession 
of the men of the commonwealth, could not be quickly 
made, and were only to be got by skilled workmen laboring 
for a long time. Rifles, shells, cannon, explosives often 
required a year or two years to make. When the United 
States entered the war later on, the first year was largely 
spent in preliminary preparations and getting the delicate 
tools, and it was two years before Great Britain was able 
to have in France a large army provided with rifles and 
cannon. Indeed, the great service of France was to be 
that in the west she would hold Germany back while 
England, and later America, prepared themselves to fight. 
In the east Russia, not similarly defended, was almost 
completely destroyed in the first two years. It is clear 



Material 
for war 



War 
material 
difficult 
to obtain 



454 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Immense 

superiority 

of the nation 

possessing 

war 

materials 



Railroads 
in war 



now that a nation provided with the enormous and terrible 
death-dealing devices of the latest age can probably con- 
quer all of its enemies unprepared before they have time 
to equip themselves with the implements needed for de- 
fense. That is what made the Great War such a critical 
period in the history of civilization: had Germany 
triumphed, she might have conquered all her rivals and 
then never allowed them to arm themselves, and so main- 
tained her domination for ages. At all events, it seems 
that Germany had prepared for the contest so thoroughly 
that when she took the field she had more of the material 
of war than existed then in all the rest of the world. 
Where the Russians had one rifle for each three soldiers, 
she had three rifles for each soldier of hers. In heavy 
cannon she was beyond all others, and she had accumu- 
lated shells, barbed wire, and military apparatus in quan- 
tities incredible and undreamed of. 

Germany had the best system of military railroads in 
the world. Strategy is essentially the moving of armies. 
Napoleon and other great commanders won their principal 
victories by swiftly putting superior forces where they 
could take the enemy at a disadvantage — in the flank, or 
across his communications in the rear, or putting two or 
three men where the enemy had one. Formerly this had 
been done by the marching of infantry, as quickly as 
possible over the best roads. But in the latter part of the 
nineteenth century, by which time the best land com- 
munication was over railroads, it was evident that rail- 
ways would be of immense importance in the moving of 
armies, and this was indeed seen to be the case in the 
American Civil War (1861-5). Nowhere was this lesson 
taken to heart so well as in Germany, where more and 
more the railroads were laid out with respect to military 
considerations. By 1914 there was a magnificent system, 
controlled by the government and, when necessary, 
completely subject to the military authorities, radiating 



THE GREAT WAR 



455 



out from Berlin to all the important fortresses and points 
near the frontiers, while just within the boundaries, some- 
thing like the rim of a wheel, ran connecting lines along 
which bodies of men might be swiftly moved back and 
forth. Russia and France had their military railroad 
systems also, but not so well-developed as the German. 
It was by means of this system that Germany hurled at 
Belgium the mighty army which so nearly crushed France 
at the beginning of the war. Because of it her armies in 
East Prussia were repeatedly able to disconcert larger 
bodies of Russians moving more slowly. And, because of 
the advantages which her railroads gave her, Germany was 
soon able to take from France and Russia the best of their 
railroads available for campaigns against her, thus paralyz- 
ing them almost completely. 

Germany had at the beginning of the war the most ex- 
tensive system of spying and secret propaganda in the 
world — though all the great nations employed these de- 
vices, and some had them highly developed. In Belgium 
the work of the armies had been prepared in advance. 
Artillery distances had been very accurately measured, 
and concrete foundations for great cannons had been put 
under tennis courts or factory buildings. In France, 
socialists were encouraged to prevent or confuse mobiliza- 
tion. In Egypt, Morocco, India, and Ireland malcon- 
tents had long been urged and were now encouraged to 
rise against England or France. In Russia, it is said, 
huge bribes were offered to commanders who would sell 
their fortresses, and it was afterward learned that most 
of the plans of the Russian armies were sold by traitors 
to German spies, who also paid bribes to keep munitions 
from being dispatched to the Russian armies. 

The Central Powers had the advantage of position. 
They were adjacent, and could easily act together; the 
Allies were separated, and for a long time acted separately. 
The Germans had the central position and the "inner 



The German 

railway 

system 



Spies 



Central 
position 



456 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The 

Entente has 
command of 
the sea 



Superior 
resources 



lines," much as France had had in the War of the Spanish 
Succession. The Germans could move over short lines 
and strike in any direction quickly; the Allies had the 
longer lines. Roughly speaking, the Germans could move 
along the radii of a circle, the Allies had to move around 
the outside. 

On the other hand, the Allies had certain advantages 
which often seemed too little to bring them success against 
the victories of the German armies, but which, in the end, 
yielded complete triumph. Above all, they had command 
of the sea. The Allies were more or less widely separated. 
Their essential communications with one another lay over 
the water. If these communications were ever cut, they 
could certainly be beaten one after the other. That 
period of the war which seemed most hopeless for the 
Allies was when German submarines threatened to sever 
their lines of communications on the water. But the 
Allies always kept command of the sea. In this work the 
vital and indispensable factor was the British navy. 

The Allies had greater resources. At the beginning of 
the war it looked as if Germany and Austria-Hungary 
were hopelessly outmatched in population and resources 
of materials and money. Germany was, however, ready 
for a sudden stroke, and she was so successful at the 
start, that by the end of the first year she had taken 
possession of districts in Belgium, France, and Russia 
which were of immense importance for the carrying on of 
a European war, and which gave her for a time a 
decisive advantage. The resources she then had under 
her control enabled her to make twice as much steel 
and hence twice as much armament and munition, as all 
her opponents combined. In 1916 and 1917 many of the 
best judges thought it impossible that Germany could ever 
be defeated. All this was changed by the entrance of the 
United States into the conflict, after which presently the 
Allies once more had decisive superiority in resources. 



THE GREAT WAR 



457 



However many factors may have entered into the war, 
the conflict presently assumed the character of a contest 
between two different types of civilization and mind, in 
which the democratic systems of France, Britain, and 
America, with their large allowance of personal liberty 
and individual initiative, were matched against the su- 
perbly organized and efficient autocracy of the German 
Empire. In the end it was found that the democratic peo- 
ples showed greater tenacity of purpose, higher intelli- 
gence, and far greater power of adaptability and invention. 
Every one of the frightful devices, such as poison gas and 
submarines used against merchant ships, was met, and 
checked, and in the end excelled by new devices more 
effective still. 

Such were German methods and German ideals that it 
seemed to the Allies that a German victory would bring 
the destruction of the democratic and humanitarian 
systems toward which men had so long been striving. The 
Allies seemed almost hopelessly defeated after two years 
of the war, but always the cause for which they were 
struggling nerved them to hold fast and fight on longer. 
Backward Russia was the only one of the Great Powers on 
the Allied side to drop out. It seemed to the Allies that 
the world would scarcely be a fit place to live in if what 
the Germans had done was sealed with success. And 
always, too, they were supported by the evident sympathy 
of most of the neutral peoples, and by the fact that, 
one after the other, neutrals were joining to support 
their cause. The Germans had no such moral support as 
this. They believed their cause a good one, but in a 
different way. They were strong in courage and con- 
fidence, in the midst of success, but when the war began 
to go against them decisively, they did not persist as 
France had done, almost against all hope, but collapsed 
completely before the fighting even reached their frontiers. 

The German plan of campaigji had been arranged long 



Initiative 
and 

inventive- 
ness 



Tenacity 
and moral 
courage 



458 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The German 
plan of 
campaign 



Entrance 
into France 



before 1914. The armies of the Empire could be 
mobihzed more quickly than those of any other power, 
so that Germany could always strike before any of her 
foes. This advantage, joined with the advantage of in- 
terior position, enabled her to strike at her enemies as she 
chose, and attempt to destroy them separately. She had 
planned to crush first the enemy most immediately dan- 
gerous, and afterward turn upon those who could not 
move so quickly, and destroy them also. The first attack, 
then, must be upon France, who had an army not so large 
as the German, but exceedingly good, and who could, 
perhaps, mobilize almost as rapidly as she. Therefore, 
the Germans designed to make an immediate and terrible 
thrust, hoping that France would be crushed in less than 
two months, after which would come the turn of the 
Russians, slow moving but mighty, who would in any 
event be held by the Austrians while France was meet- 
ing her fate. 

But for the success of this plan the indispensable condi- 
tion, it was thought, was that France should be over- 
whelmed without any delay; and it would not be easy to 
do this, since the frontier between France and Germany 
was short, and strongly fortified on both sides — on the 
French side there was a line of fortresses from Verdun 
down to Belfort, just as across the frontier on the German 
side they stretched from Strassburg down to Neubreisach. 
Here the French were prepared to resist, and probably 
their positions could be forced only after delay and enor- 
mous losses. Accordingly, for some years it had seemed 
possible that when Germany next attacked France her 
armies would march through the valley of the Meuse, the 
best of all entrances into France from Germany, even 
though this line of march lay across the territory of 
Belgium, whose neutralization had been guaranteed by the 
German Empire along with the other Great Powers. If 
Germany abided by her word, then France would not be 



THE GREAT WAR 



459 



attacked by way of Belgium; but if the Germans con- 
sidered only their military advantage, then France might 
be attacked either from Alsace-Lorraine or through 
the Meuse Valley. Unfortunately, she could not know 
whether the Germans would keep their engagement. In 
any event, however, France could concentrate at the 
beginning for defence only about half as many troops as 
Germany could use in the thrust against her, and in ac- 
cordance with well-known principles of strategy, it was 
wisest for her to keep most of them concentrated in one 
large body. So the French determined to ignore the 
possibility of an attack through Belgium, concentrate 
against Alsace-Lorraine, and following the best prin- 
ciples of military science, take the offensive, if they could. 
This they did, in the earliest days of the war, attacking 
through the Lost Provinces, and gaining some slight suc- 
cess. But they were soon repulsed in Alsace and badly 
defeated in Lorraine, this being due partly to misman- 
agement and very largely to German superiority in ma- 
chine guns and heavy artillery. 

The Germans were merely holding their lines with com- 
paratively small forces in the south. It was soon evident 
that their great effort was to be through Belgium, straight 
at the heart of France. August 4, immediately after their 
demand had been rejected, they poured into Belgium. 
Their line of march through the Meuse Valley was barred 
by the strong fortresses of Liege and Namur, with Ant- 
werp, supposedly impregnable, threatening their flank 
from the north. Against the avalanche of German soldiers 
the brave little Belgian army could do nothing but fight 
retarding actions, but it was hoped that the fortresses 
would hold until assistance came from England and 
France. The Germans were, indeed, checked for a 
moment at Liege, but immediately they revealed to the 
world one of the great surprises of the war. Against 
Liege they quickly brought incredibly large cannon, which 



Easy en- 
trance into 
France from 
Belgium 



Invasion of 
Belgium by 
the Ger- 



460 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The British 
and the 
French de- 
feated in 
Belgium 



France at 
the brink of 
destruction 



they moved easily, on great broad wheels, up to positions 
prepared by secret agents in advance; and, having ready 
at hand the exact distances, dropped 10- and 12-inch 
shells of incredible power upon the forts, reducing the 
fortress in a few days. Then, bringing up their monstrous 
42-centimeter guns, which fired 16-inch shells, they cap- 
tured Namur. All the western world was appalled at the 
news that this fortress had fallen in one day, and that the 
way into France was open. 

Through Belgium, by forced marches, came such an 
army as the world had never seen before — gray-clad sol- 
diers in unending stream, equipped to the last detail; and 
accompanied by the most fearful engines of destruction. 
The Belgian army was flung aside upon Antwerp, which 
was masked, and which the Germans took two months 
later, when they had leisure to bring up their heavy cannon. 
Brussels surrendered without resistance, and when the 
campaign was over it was found that all of Belgium, ex- 
cept for one little section on the Channel, adjoining France, 
had been conquered at a stroke. The British and the 
French did try to come to the rescue, but they could not 
send strong forces at once, and those which they sent 
came too late. The French were heavily defeated at 
Charleroi and the British at Mons, narrowly escaping 
destruction as they retreated precipitately, back into 
France. 

For France the situation rapidly became almost hope- 
less. Her army, smaller than the German, was far away, 
in the wrong place. Shifting a large number of soldiers 
is one of the most complicated and difficult tasks in the 
world; and it was very doubtful whether the French 
commanders could do it, with the Germans rushing down 
now upon Paris. In the course of three weeks, almost 
by a miracle, they accomplished the maneuver, but by the 
end of September, when this had been done, the French 
armies had undergone a succession of disastrous defeats 



THE GREAT WAR 



461 



and everywhere had had to retreat before the foe. The 
French Government moved from Paris to Bordeaux, and 
it was evident that one of the great crises in Europe's 
history was at hand. The Germans beheved that they 
would soon have the French army cut off and surrounded, 
and would soon capture Paris. It almost seemed that 
they would crush France in six weeks, even as they had 
boasted. 

The French people did not despair. They rose now to a 
height of grandeur which surprised their enemies and their 
friends, something that had before happened not seldom 
in the history of France The frontier fortresses held 
from Belfort northward, above all the immensely im- 
portant pivot position at Verdun. Between Verdun and 
the huge entrenched camp at Paris the retreating French 
armies were forced back until their line bulged far down in 
the center and threatened to burst asunder, while the 
Germans under Von Kluck threatened to outflank the 
French line near Paris. September 5 the matter at 
last came to issue. German horsemen had just ridden 
into the outskirts of Paris, but Von Kluck, confronting the 
fortress of Paris and a French army not yet destroyed, had 
turned aside from the capital, and thus left his own flank 
exposed. Joffre, commander of the French, unable to 
stand at first, had retreated steadily to positions which he 
considered favorable for a battle. He had reached them 
now, just when the French could go back no farther. *' The 
hour has come," he said, in a famous order, "to hold at 
all costs and allow oneself to be slain rather than give 
way. . . . Everything depends on the result of to- 
morrow." 

September 6 began the series of mortal combats ex- 
tending for a great distance, and fought between 1,500,000 
Germans with 4,000 cannons besides their heavy guns, 
and 1,000,000 Frenchmen with a small but excellent 
British force. From the river that flows through this 



Retreat of 
the French 
army 



The Battle 
of the Marne 



462 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The French 
against the 
Germans: 
wager of 
battle 



Immense 
importance 
of the battle 



part of the country the conflict is known as the Battle of 
the Marne. The Germans were superior in numbers 
and equipment and flushed with a mighty triumph. The 
French were numerically inferior and disheartened by 
disaster. But the Germans were now wearied from 
their rapid advance and far from their base, while the 
French were close to their own, in favorable positions. 
For four days the great battle raged. The Germans 
fought bravely and well, but the French soldiers, with 
backs to the wall, with everything now and in the future at 
stake, rose to prodigies of valor. Everywhere the strug- 
gle was desperate and prolonged. Generally the French 
line held at all points, and the battle was decided by two 
great German reverses. Near Paris their line was de- 
feated after a terrible combat, they were nearly out- 
flanked, and saved themselves only by precipitate retreat, 
at times almost like a rout, and their backward movement 
gradually compelled other German armies near by to give 
ground and go back with them. Meanwhile, in the center 
the Germans nearly broke through, and threatened to 
cut the French line, but General Foch, four times attacking 
them in turn, and four times defeated, declared that 
"the situation is excellent," attacked them again, com- 
pletely defeated the Prussian Guard, and broke through 
the German line. By September 10, the decision had 
come; and by the middle of the month the Germans had 
retreated from a large part of the conquests they had 
made, Paris was safe, and the French army was saved. 

The Battle of the Marne was the most decisive incident 
in the Great War. It was the most decisive struggle 
in the history of Europe since the Battle of Blen- 
heim (1704). Had the Germans won, the French army 
would almost certainly have been destroyed, or at best 
driven south of the Loire, leaving Paris and all north and 
east France, including the principal railways and indus- 
trial regions, in the enemy's hands, completely cutting off 



THE GREAT WAR 



463 



what remained of France from good connection with Eng- 
land, and exposing England, unprepared, to much more 
dangerous menace than she afterward had to meet. Most 
probably the Germans could then have held their lines in 
the west with few troops, turned on Russia and soon 
destroyed her, as they did anyhow somewhat later, then 
come back to the west, completed the destruction of 
France, and undertaken the conquest of England. If 
England and the British fleet had passed under their sway, 
no other nation could have resisted their aggression; and 
the "world power," which Bernhardi had spoken of, might 
conceivably have been theirs for a great while to come. So 
great was the military strength of the Germans in 1914 
that they could defeat all other powers if those powers 
were not given time to prepare. The British Empire and 
the United States could defeat the Germans later on, but 
not without some years to raise their armies and equip 
them. They had the necessary time only because mean- 
while the French held the lines in the west, and this would 
have been impossible except for triumph on the Marne. 

Such was the Battle of the Marne, in larger perspective. 
Actually, at the time, it seemed to the Germans that they 
had been merely repulsed, not badly defeated, and that 
later on they would return and then not fail. Moreover, 
in the campaign they had enormous success. After their 
defeat they went back from the vicinity of Paris, and 
evacuated a considerable portion of France; but they 
halted along the Aisne River, and there entrenching, defied 
every attack of the Allies. They had conquered and they 
held behind their lines the richest industrial district of 
France and the principal source of France's supply of 
coal and iron-ore. No longer, except for outside assist- 
ance, could the French make sufficient munitions. When, 
in the following year, in the east, the Germans had taken 
from the Russians Poland and the districts near by, very 
similar was the case of Russians, and by the autumn of 



The Ger- 
mans pre- 
vented from 
quickly 
winning the 
war 



Great suc- 
cess of the 
Germans 



464 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Struggle for 
the Channel 
Ports : 
Dunkirk, 
Calais, 
Boulogne 



The line in 
the east 



1915 the Germans seemed to have definitely won the war 
on the continent of Europe. Russia was not able to re- 
cover; but France, supplied from abroad with materials 
for war, continued the struggle. This was possible only 
because of the work of the British navy. 

The French and the British lacked the heavy artillery 
and the shells with which to drive the Germans back from 
the Aisne, but they wisely extended their own lines north- 
ward just in time to keep the Germans from occupying, 
as they might easily have done, the Channel ports, espe- 
cially Calais and Dunkirk, the gateway to England. All 
too late the Germans realized the supreme importance 
of these places, and launched a series of mass attacks 
upon the British and the French in an effort to break 
through at all costs. At Ypres, where the British held 
against terrible odds, and along the Yser River, where the 
British, Belgians, and French were almost annihilated 
but held out until the country was flooded and warships 
with long-range guns joined in the defence, the Germans 
were held back from their goal. The result of this action 
was almost as important as the victory of the Marne. 

So, for a while, in the west the great movements came to 
an end. The Germans had won mighty triumphs, but 
they had failed to win the war quickly. Both sides now 
settled down in long, fortified lines, which reached from Swit- 
zerland to the North Sea, which left to the French a small 
part of German Alsace, but left within the German lines 
northeastern France and almost all of Belgium. These 
lines were constantly made stronger on both sides, until 
at last it seemed impossible that they could ever be broken. 

Meanwhile, great things had been happening in the east. 
While Germany hurled herself upon France, she left her 
eastern borders nearly unprotected, believing that the 
Russians could not immediately do much damage, and 
relying on the Austrians, meantime, to meet them. But 
the Russians surprised their enemies by the speed with 



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27. THE EASTERN FRONT IN THE GREAT WAR 



THE GREAT WAR 



467 



which they commenced their campaign. The Austrians 
did, indeed, begin an offensive into Russian Poland, but 
they were at once met by the advancing Russian armies, 
and thrown back in disastrous defeat. After a series of 
great battles the Russians overran nearly all of Galicia, 
the exposed part of Austria-Hungary, drove on the Aus- 
trian armies in precipitate rout, and captured all but one 
of the Galician fortresses. Austria had utterly failed to 
check the Russians, and in a short time was calling for 
assistance from the Germans. 

While the Austrians were being driven back from 
Poland another Russian army invaded Germany itself. 
In a short time part of East Prussia had been crossed. 
At once a strong force was sent across Germany, and this 
army under Von Hindenburg caught the Russians in the 
region of the Mazurian marshes and lakes, and there at the 
battle of Tannenberg a force of 250,000 Russians was scat- 
tered or destroyed. Some escaped, many thousands were 
captured, and subsequently paraded in triumph through 
Berlin, but a host of them had been killed by the great 
shells or smothered in the marshes. It was as complete a 
triumph as the victory of Hannibal over the Romans at 
Cannae, but such were the proportions of the Great War 
that Tannenberg was merely an episode in the struggle. 
East Prussia was cleared of the foe; but it is believed that 
the absence from the west front of the German soldiers 
who did this had some connection with the victory of the 
French at the Marne. 

In 1915 the Germans, holding the initiative as before, 
changed their general plan. They had intended to over- 
whelm France and then destroy Russia at their leisure. 
In this they had failed. They now determined to hold 
France and Britain, standing on the defensive in their en- 
trenchments in the west, and turn their principal effort 
to destroying the Russians completely. During the winter 
of 1914-15 there was terrible and dreary fighting in the 



The Rus- 
sians de- 
feated in 
East Prussia 



Struggle in 
the east, 
1914-15 



468 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Campaigns 
in Poland 
and Galicia 



The 
Dunajec 



east as the Germans came to the aid of their demorahzed 
Austrian alHes. On the wintry plains of Poland, and 
farther north along the Russian border, great battles were 
fought, until presently the two sides settled down in lines 
of entrenchments longer but less strong than those in the 
west. In March, the Russians took the great fortress of 
Przemysl, the last stronghold in Galicia, together with a 
huge Austrian army. All through the winter they had 
been fighting in the heights of the Carpathian Mountains 
for possession of the passes ; now they had all but the most 
important one of them, and threatened to pour in a tor- 
rent down into Hungary. They were also near to the 
great fortress of Cracow, the fall of which might open the 
way into the German Empire. 

But as spring began the Germans and Austrians were 
ready for a decisive blow. About the center of the long, 
irregular line, not far from Cracow, an immense con- 
centration of men and cannons was made. May 2, 
after a fearful bombardment, the like of which had never 
before been seen, which annihilated the Russians and 
completely obliterated their lines for a space of some miles, 
the Teutonic armies, launching a great attack, broke 
completely through the Russian position. The only hope 
was rapid retreat until the parts disunited could join. 
This the Russians attempted, and on the whole their back- 
ward movement was well carried out; it never turned into 
rout, nor was their main force ever surrounded and cap- 
tured. But the danger was very terrible. When the 
break through occurred at the Dunajec River, the Russian 
forces in Galicia and in the Carpathians were in imminent 
danger of being cut off; and while they were being pressed 
by Teutonic armies under Von Mackensen, farther north 
they were being attacked by the German armies of Von 
Hindenburg. 

So began a great and disastrous retreat. The Russians 
fled from the Carpathian Mountains; they quickly aban- 



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THE GREAT WAR 



THE GREAT WAR 



469 



doned nearly all of Galicia together with the great for- 
tresses which they had captured after so much effort; 
and at the same time they were retreating back through 
Poland, fighting bitter rear-guard actions, but never really 
able to halt the pursuit. The outlying Polish fortresses 
were taken ; then Warsaw, the capital ; then the second-line 
fortresses ; presently Brest-Litovsk, the center of the Rus- 
sian system of defence; and even cities and strong points 
beyond. When at last the retreat came to an end it was 
found that the Germans had, indeed, fallen short of entire 
success, for they had not completely destroyed the Rus- 
sian armies, nor had they put Russia utterly out of the 
war. But it was afterward seen that Russia was virtually 
eliminated in this campaign. A vast number of her 
soldiers had been killed or disabled, and an equally great 
number taken prisoners by the Germans. Most of the 
trained officers with whom Russia had begun the war 
were now captive or dead. Most of the war material was 
worn out or lost, and Russia was neither an industrial na- 
tion capable of making arms and ammunition on a great 
scale, nor was she so situated that she could, like France, 
easily procure great supplies from outside. Moreover, 
her railroads, best adapted for military purpose, were 
now in the enemy's hands. Russia did continue to fight 
valiantly for a time, and she accomplished some great 
things in the following year; but as we see it now, she was 
definitively defeated in the campaign that began on the 
Dunajec. 

Thus, in the course of little more than a year, for Brest- 
Litovsk fell in August and Vilna in September, 1915, 
Germany had greatly, though not completely, succeeded 
in the west, and far more greatly succeeded in the east. 
In the autumn she turned her attention to the south, and 
soon accomplished the task for which she had begun the 
war: getting control of the Balkans. The hour of Servia 
had come. Thus far the Serbs had been able to defend 



Retreat of 
the Rus- 
sians 



The Central 
Powers get 
control of 
the Balkans 



470 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Servia 
conquered 



Gallipoli 



Allied fleet 
at the 
Dardanelles 



themselves. Twice had the Austrians, occupied as they 
were in their contest with Russia, sent expeditions over 
the Danube; twice had they been driven back in shame- 
ful defeat and disaster. But now a third invasion was 
undertaken by the Germans, at a time when Russia 
could give no more help, and, worse still, as the little 
country was struck from the side by Bulgaria, who now 
entered the war on the side of the Central Powers. The 
exhausted Serbs were ground to pieces by the Teutons 
from the north and the vengeful Bulgarians from the 
east; their country was completely subjugated; and only 
a part of the Servian army, and a few of the people escaped 
over the mountains, in a horrible retreat. They were 
taken to islands off the coast by Allied warships. 

Meanwhile, the Allies had suffered a great defeat. In 
November, 1914, Turkey had entered the war on the side 
of Germany and Austria. This more than balanced the 
decision of Italy not to assist the Central Powers, for 
it almost completely cut off Russia from her western part- 
ners, making it very difficult for them to obtain her wheat, 
which they badly needed, and just as hard for her to 
obtain from them the war supplies without which she 
could not long play an important part. Accordingly, it 
was of the greatest importance that communications be 
opened up again by forcing the Dardanelles and after- 
ward taking Constantinople. Moreover, this would not 
only assist Russia, but it would be a momentous success in 
itself, and bring to an end, perhaps, the German dream of 
mastery in the Balkans and Asiatic Turkey. Therefore, 
in February, 1915, British and French warships attempted 
to force the strait of the Dardanelles. After severe 
losses they desisted, though it is said that victory was 
within reach if they had attacked again the next day. A 
great expedition was now sent out to take the positions 
which guarded the entrance, and in April a landing was 
efiFected on the Gallipoli Peninsula. 



THE GREAT WAR 



471 



In all the war there was no more glorious and disastrous 
enterprise than this attempt to scale the barren, rocky 
mountains which guarded the strait. Even drinking 
water had to be brought from a long distance, and numbers 
went insane from thirst. Many a heroic attempt was 
made, and the fighting went on all through the time 



Successful 
defense by 
the Turks 



<K^ Brtish Landing 

♦ Forts 

Roads 

Scale of Miles 




29. GALLIPOLI 



when the Russians were being defeated far to the north. 
One day Allied soldiers won to the top and saw the blue 
waters of Marmora in the distance; but they were soon 
driven back. The Turks fought with stubborn courage 
until the Germans, having put Russia out of the way and 
destroyed Servia, were coming to relieve them. Then 
Gallipoli was evacuated, and the attempt ended in com- 



The Allies 
fail 



472 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Position of 
the Teu- 
tonic powers 



The Allies 
keep control 
of the sea 



plete failure. The troops thus withdrawn were taken to 
the Greek city of Salonica, the most important position 
on the ^Egean, to which they had been invited by the 
Greek Government, though the invitation was withdrawn 
by the Greek king. There they constituted a potential 
threat against Bulgaria and Turkey, though for a long 
time they had to remain inactive, and accomplished vir- 
tually nothing. 

On land now the Germans seemed to have won the 
contest completely. They had obtained what they began 
the war for, and they had conquered much besides. If 
they could only hold what they had seized, they would 
come out of the struggle incomparably the greatest power 
in the world. Accordingly, they chose this moment to 
let it be known that they would listen to proposals for 
peace. But however great the disasters that had come 
to the Allies thus far, the consequences of such a peace 
as Germany would be willing to make seemed too terrible, 
and the German suggestions were not even considered. 
Besides, it still seemed to many that the future lay with 
the Allies; that they had been taken unprepared, and that 
soon they would be able to fight on equal terms, and get 
the victory shortly thereafter. 

One great success they had obtained: Germany's ship- 
ping had been swept from the seas. All her commerce 
had vanished; and her warships stayed close to the forti- 
fications of Helgoland and the Kiel Canal. German 
submarines did some execution against British warships 
at first, but this soon came to an end. German cruisers 
made daring raids, but only for a while. At first much 
damage was done to Allied shipping by German raiders, 
but one by one they were hunted down, and this also came 
to an end. In November, 1914, in the Far East, the Ger- 
man naval base of Tsingtao (Kiao-chau) had been taken 
by the Japanese. A German fleet did destroy an inferior 
British fleet off the coast of Chile, but shortly after it was 



THE GREAT WAR 



473 



completely destroyed by a superior British force off the 
Falkland Islands. Meanwhile, the British and the French 
fleets had entire control of the oceans, over which their 
commerce flowed in unceasing stream. 

There was but one great battle on the sea. May 31, 1916, 
the German High Seas Fleet cruising off the coast of Den- 
mark was overtaken by a part of the British Grand Fleet. 
The powerful but lightly armored British battle cruisers en- 
gaged the enemy, hoping to hold him until the remainder 
of the British fleet arrived. The Germans fought with 
great skill and superior speed and equipment, and in- 
flicted losses. As the rest of the British ships arrived the 
German fleet withdrew, and in the failing light of the even- 
ing, behind a screen of submarines and destroyers, it made 
good its escape. It had done more damage than it suf- 
fered, and the German Government proclaimed a great 
victory won. After a few days, however, it was seen that 
the action was essentially a British victory, for Britain's 
hold on the seas continued unshaken. The German 
battleships had withdrawn to their haven, and the spirit 
of the crews declined. They did not again come forth 
to fight for control of the waters. When they next came 
out it was in ignominious surrender. 

The French fleet and later the Italian fleet in the Medi- 
terranean, and in the latter part of the war the powerful 
American fleet, contributed materially in maintaining the 
Allied mastery of the seas. But this command of the 
waters was kept primarily by the warships of the British 
Empire. Since there was only one great naval battle 
during these years, there was little of the spectacular 
about the Grand Fleet's service, and the importance of 
what it did may easily be overlooked. Silently, and 
with not much said about what was being done, in the fair 
weather of summer and in the storms and sleet and cold 
of the North Sea winters, unfaltering and with vigilance 
unceasing, the prolonged watch was kept. Always there 



The Battle 
of Jutland, 
1916 



The British 
Grand Fleet 



474 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



All-import- 
ant work of 
the British 
Navy 



Slow prog- 
ress of the 
Allies on 
land 



was danger from the mines which Germans strewed in the 
sea; always the submarines were lurking to send in their 
deadly torpedoes. There was the blockade to maintain, 
by which Germany was slowly weakened and reduced; 
there was the all-important line of communication across 
to France to be kept open; there were the sea-routes to 
be kept safe between the parts of the widely scattered 
Empire and with the other countries from which came 
indispensable supplies; the German warships were to be 
watched lest they raid the coasts of England, or lest some 
of them dash out into the open sea to prey upon Allied 
commerce; and above all the High Seas Fleet of the Ger- 
man Empire was to be waited for and met if ever it dared 
to come forth. And on this faithful watch and ward the 
whole Allied cause depended. If ever the Grand Fleet 
were destroyed or beaten, in a short time the British Em- 
pire would be starved into complete surrender, and then 
triumphant Germany could dictate to the rest of the world 
such conditions as pleased her. Now that the Great War 
is over, the work of the British seamen stands out in its true 
proportions and grandeur. 

It had been supposed that sea power would finally be 
decisive, and so it proved in the end. But for some time 
it seemed that Germany had won such mighty victories 
on land that she could win the war in spite of the naval 
superiority of the Allies. It was evident that the Central 
Powers could not be starved into submission by the block- 
ade, but must be beaten also on land. At first it was 
hoped that this could be done when the powers of the 
Entente were more fully prepared. Britain was arming 
and would presently be ready, and in May, 1915, Italy, 
partly through real sympathy with the Western Powers 
and horror at German methods, and partly through desire 
of getting from Austria-Hungary Italia Irredenta and 
stronger position on the Adriatic, declared war on the 
Dual Monarchy. But Italy was at once halted by the 



THE GREAT WAR 



475 



terrible obstacle of the Alps and made scarcely any prog- 
ress, and it required more than a year for Britain to put 
a great army in France. So, in 1915, while Russia was 
being defeated and Servia destroyed, the Allies ac- 
complished almost nothing in the west. The British made 
some little progress at Neuve Chapelle, but immediately 
the Germans, using for the first time their horrible poison 
gas, attacked near by at Ypres, and nearly broke through 
to the ports of the Channel. That they failed to do this 
was because the Canadians, who had thrown themselves 
heart and soul into the struggle along with Great Britain, 
closed up the gap and held the line. In September, the 
French attacking in the Champagne after tremendous 
artillery preparation, tried to break the German lines as 
the Germans had broken the Russian, but after some suc- 
cess in the beginning they were brought to a halt with 
nothing of importance accomplished. In all respects 1915 
was a year of Allied failure and German success. 

Slow as it seemed, Britain was really assembling a great 
army in northern France, well drilled and fully equipped. 
Some time in 1916 she would be ready for her first great 
effort. Again, so well was she organized and prepared, 
Germany was ready to take the initiative and deal the 
first stroke. Having disposed of Russia she resolved to 
make a second thrust at France, and possibly destroy her 
before England could throw in her might. Therefore, 
near to the key fortress of Verdun, very secretly an 
enormous concentration of artillery was made, and sud- 
denly, toward the end of February, 1916, a terrible bom- 
bardment was begun from thousands of cannon. This 
was followed by an attack which at once carried all the 
environs of the fortress on the side assaulted. So quickly 
was this accomplished that it seemed for a moment that 
the Germans would take Verdun just as they had taken 
Antwerp and Warsaw. Indeed the railroad communica- 
tions with the fortress were now largely cut, and there 



The Italians 
halted by 
the Alps 



Verdun, 
1916 



476 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The French 
in mortal 
danger 



The Battle 
of the 
Somme, 
1916 



was no small danger that a French army with all its stores 
and cannon might be trapped there. It is said that the 
French military authorities had resolved to abandon 
the position, but for sentimental reasons it was finally 
decided to hold on. Supplies were brought in by a 
wonderful system of motor transport, hastily arranged, 
and the new German methods of attack were countered 
by new methods of defence. The Germans came on with 
the utmost bravery, but were met with an unconquerable 
courage. "They shall not pass!" was the cry; and so it 
was. Other strong positions were taken, but the German 
progress now was very slow. Month after month, through 
the spring and into the summer, the fighting went on. 
There were savage struggles in underground passages, and 
scenes of slaughter too horrible to describe. Every little 
hill in the neighborhood was fought over and soaked with 
blood. More than half a million Germans were killed 
and wounded, and the number of Frenchmen was perhaps 
not much less. In July, the Germans were forced to 
slacken their efforts because of danger threatening else- 
where. Later on, after superb artillery preparation, the 
French retook in two days all the important positions for 
which the Germans had struggled so long. The attack on 
Verdun resulted in a great German failure. 

The Germans had been forced to desist because at last 
the British were about ready, to the north. July 1, the 
British and the French, making the kind of artillery 
preparation that now preceded all great attacks, began 
an offensive to break through the German lines. For 
days the bombardment continued, and the distant thunder 
of the cannons could be heard over the Channel, in Eng- 
land. The attack was in the region of the River Somme, 
and was directed at the towns of Bapaume and Peronne, 
and the more important centers of St. Quentin, Cambrai, 
and Laon behind them. If these places were taken, most 
probably the Germans would have to retreat out of France. 



THE GREAT WAR 



477 



The German positions were immensely strong. There 
were many httle trenches and strong Httle forts for ma- 
chine gunners, protected in front by tangles of thick barbed 
wire. Behind them were deep underground places of 
refuge, extending down several stories, in which armies 
could be sheltered while the great shells were falling. Un- 
less these defences were largely obliterated beforehand, the 
attacking infantry would be mown down by macliine 
guns as they came forward. When the infantry did 
advance, the French at once reached the outskirts of 
Peronne, but the British, more strongly opposed, made al- 
most no progress. Thereafter, all through the summer, 
the armies were locked in a death struggle, the Allies 
slowly advancing a little, but suffering fearful losses, and 
the Germans losing almost as many. The autumn rains 
and the deep mud put an end to the offensive, and it 
seemed that the Allies had gained almost nothing. They 
had taken no important town, and the German lines were 
nowhere broken. But actually the Germans did make a 
considerable retreat in the following spring, and they now 
knew that England and France were not ready to aban- 
don the contest because of discouragement at German 
victories, but that a terrible struggle must continue, wear- 
ing down the strength of both sides, until one or the other 
gave up through exhaustion. 

During the course of this summer the hopes of the 
Allies ran high for a time. In May, the Austrians began 
an attack upon the Italians from the Trentino, but after 
some success were forced to desist; and later the Italians 
captured Gorizia, and made great progress through the 
mountain barrier and on the way to Trieste. The Aus- 
trians had drawn back because in June the Russians 
under General Brusilov, making their last great effort, 
completely shattered the Austrian lines in the east, took 
a huge number of captives, and pressed on so far that 
only strong German assistance, at a time when it was diffi- 



Strength of 
the German 
position 



Germany 
at bay, 1916 



478 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The last 
great 
Russian 
offensive 



A contest of 
exhaustion 



The Ger- 
man sub- 
marines 



cult for Germany to detach any troops, saved the Aus- 
trians from destruction. The Russians were finally 
halted, but the position of the Central Powers now seemed 
so dangerous that in the last days of August Rumania 
joined the Allies, The position of Germany, however, was 
still enormously strong. The Somme offensive was soon 
to come to an end, and the Russians had not only ex- 
hausted their strength, but were now a prey to traitors and 
revolutionists, and were soon to drop out of the war. Ac- 
cordingly, Rumania, attacked from the side of Bulgaria 
and from the north by a powerful German army, was 
mostly overrun, and crushed almost as completely as 
Servia had been the year before. So, for the Allies, the 
campaign of 1916 ended as darkly as that of the previous 
year. 

The war had for some time resolved itself into a dead- 
lock between Germany, flushed with success and gorged 
with conquests, and the Allies hoping to defeat her and 
wrest from her what she had taken. It was evidently to 
be a contest of resources, a contest in which time and attri- 
tion would make the weaker succumb. The best judges 
now thought that Germany could never be defeated by 
England and France, without further aid, and that at 
best the fighting must end in a draw. But the Germans 
had undertaken to win thoroughly and quickly by means 
of another device. With it, they came near to success, but 
in the end it brought their own ruin. 

They undertook to cut the communications of the Allies 
and starve England out by sinking all Allied ships by 
means of submarines. The communications of the Ger- 
mans were on land. If ever they were cut, as they were 
about to be when hostilities ceased, Germany would be de- 
feated. The most vital communications of the Allies were 
by sea. France depended on Great Britain, and the British 
people could not continue the struggle, nay, they could only 
feed themselves a few weeks, when they were no longer able 



THE GREAT WAR 



479 



to bring over the seas their food and their raw materials. 
Had the Germans ever been able to defeat the British 
fleet, they would have quickly won, and won completely; 
but this they were never able to do. The British Grand 
Fleet kept undisputed command of the surface of the seas. 
Early in 1915, however, the Germans began using their 
submarines not only to sink warships, which was legiti- 
mate, but to destroy unarmed vessels as well; and in May 
of that year the giant liner Lusitania was sunk and 
great numbers of passengers, including many Americans, 
drowned. The Germans maintained that since the British 
were trying by the blockade to starve them, especially 
their women and children, and so trying to force them to 
submit, it was very proper for them to retaliate, and try 
to blockade England with their submarines, starve her into 
submission, and so end a hideous conflict. 

This contention was accepted by few outside of Ger- 
many, since in accordance with past usage it was per- 
fectly proper for Britain, in command of the seas, to 
blockade Germany, as it would have been for Germany to 
cut off England if her warships had got command of the 
seas. On the other hand, it had gradually come to be one 
of the fundamental maxims of procedure at sea that no 
ship should be sunk without saving the crew, in case they 
were willing to surrender; and it was soon seen that usually 
submarines sank ships without warning, and that they 
could not, because of their small size, save the crews if 
they would. Germans declared that the submarine was 
a new weapon, and that new rules were applicable to it; 
but all over the world public sentiment ran strongly 
against the use of a weapon which could not from its nature 
be used in accordance with primary principles of humanity 
and mercy. 

None the less, the Germans used this device increasingly, 
hampered somewhat by the protests of neutrals and some- 
what more by various devices which the Allied navies 



The British 
dependent 
upon sea- 
borne traffic 



Sinking of 

merchant 

ships 



480 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Unrestricted 
submarine 
warfare, 
1917 



A year of 
disaster, 
1917 



employed. But they paid little attention to the one and 
largely avoided the other, and presently the menace be- 
came very grave. Great Britain went into the conflict 
with enormous shipping tonnage, but month after month 
vessels carrying supplies were sunk by submarines until 
not only the great loss of money and materials was felt 
severely, but presently it was necessary to restrict im- 
ports, since the war greatly increased the demands upon 
her merchant marine at the same time that the under- 
sea boats were sinking so many ships. Germany still 
hesitated to put forth her full effort in this manner, but 
by the end of 1916, when the strain of the contest had 
begun to tell terribly on both sides, it was evident that 
if the sinking of Allied vessels continued at the rate 
then prevailing. Great Britain must after some time be 
forced out of the war, and that if the rate of destruction 
could be largely increased, the end might come quickly. 
The principal obstacle was that the people and govern- 
ment of the United States were strongly opposed, and 
might conceivably be brought into the war against Ger- 
many. After much hesitation the choice was made, and 
January 31, 1917, the Imperial Government announced 
that it would begin unrestricted submarine warfare. The 
German people believed that Britain would be starved 
within a few months. 

This year, 1917, was a year of disaster and despair for 
the Allies. At no time did the cause of the Allies and of 
the democratic civilization of the West seem so dark. When 
the weather permitted, the British and the French began 
another offensive, to try again to break through the Ger- 
man lines. The Allies were hampered by the German 
retreat which had left an area of terrible desolation over 
which an attack could not well be made; but in April the 
British took the immensely strong position of Vimy, and 
in June, with a huge explosive charge, they blew up 
the supposedly impregnable position of Messines Ridge. 



THE GREAT WAR 



481 



Farther north they desperately strove to break down into 
the plain of Flanders and compel the evacuation of the 
seaports of Belgium, whence the submarines constantly 
issued. Several times they seemed to have good chance 
of success; but they fought with a fatal ill-fortune, and 
when the season came to an end they had endured fearful 
losses, some 800,000 men, and taken from the Germans 
nothing that compelled an important retreat. During 
the summer the French made another effort to shatter 
the German lines. Near Laon they broke through the 
Chemin des Dames positions, and gained a brilliant local 
victory, but because of terrible losses, gave up the effort 
before anything decisive was accomplished. Later events 
were to show that this was the last great offensive effort 
the French could make by themselves. They had long 
borne the brunt of the fighting, and their losses had been 
so appalling that they were now almost at the point of 
despair. That they did not falter and accept a German 
peace, which some tried to persuade them to accept, was 
due to the efforts of their great man, Clemenceau, and most 
of all to their own unconquerable spirit. 

If there was in this year doleful lack of success in the 
west, there was absolute downfall in the east. Russia 
now dropped out of the war. The Russians had fought 
almost as long as they could. A great agricultural state, 
with comparatively few railroads and scanty industrial 
development, its people, however brave, were not able 
unaided to carry on for a long time a great modern war. 
The Russian soldiers fought with a courage that should 
be for a long time remembered. At first they won im- 
portant victories, and, it may be, saved the Allied cause; 
but presently their trained officers were mostly gone and 
they had no reserve, while, worst of all, most of their equip- 
ment was lost or worn out, and they could no longer get 
enough of the machine guns and wire and cannon and shells, 
without which no campaign can now be waged. Their 



The British 
fail 



The French 
exhausted 



The collapse 
of Russia 



48S 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Heroic 
efforts of 
the Russian 
soldiers 



The Treaty 
of Brest- 
Litovsk, 
1918 



government was ineflScient and corrupt, and constantly 
military plans were betrayed to the German spies. And 
yet, the Russians fought on beyond expectation. Again 
and again the simple peasants laid down their lives in 
hopeless attacks. Without artillery preparation they 
went forth against the enemy lines, torn by heavy shells 
from a distance, shattered by the light artillery as they 
came nearer, riddled by machine-gun fire nearer at hand, 
and played upon with liquid fire as they attacked the en- 
trenchments. Meanwhile, the entire industrial and eco- 
nomic life of the country was disorganized. It was as 
though an entire nation, long suffering some grievous 
malady, had suffered to the extreme of endurance, and 
was approaching near to dissolution. The end came now. 
The government, an autocracy, efficient formerly in hold' 
ing down its people, was overthrown. This revolution 
began in March. For a while it was hoped that under 
a new liberal government Russia might become strong 
again, and once more take an important part in the war. 
But actually the people would endure nothing further, and 
they fell a prey to visionaries and radicals, who, if they 
were not traitors, wished to establish in the distracted 
country new systems such as had never before existed ex- 
cept in the minds of theorists and writers. Under the Bol- 
sheviki Russia withdrew from the war. In the following 
year, March, 1918, they signed the terrible Peace of Brest- 
Litovsk, by which Russia was dismembered and cut off 
from the sea, and reduced to impotence. They now 
applied themselves to the establishment of the extremest 
socialism, seeming to care little for the fact that Russia 
had lost by the treaty what her leaders had striven for 
ages to gain. At last the Germans were completely free 
in the east. Now they could devote all their strength to 
one more crushing blow in the west. 

In October, 1917, there was an indication of what they 
could do when Italy was struck and almost destroyed at 



THE GREAT WAR 



483 



a blow. The Italians had had much success in spite of 
difficulties incredible and elsewhere scarce understood. 
Most of Italy's territory adjoining Austria-Hungary ended 
at the very foothills of the Alps. Immediately beyond, 
held by the enemy and strongly fortified in advance, rose 
tier on tier of giant mountains, until the ramparts at last 



The Austro- 

Italian 

frontier 




30. AUSTRO-ITALIAN FRONTIER 



were high above the snow and the clouds. To the south, 
at the head of the Adriatic Sea, was the Carso Plateau, 
littered with rocks, honeycombed with caves, treeless, 
without water, blazing under the sun. Through all these 
defences the Italians with undaunted courage had slowly 
battered their way. They had mastered the Carso, and 
now were near to Trieste. They had captured Monte 



The Italians 
batter their 
way through 



484 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Italians 
defeated: 
Caporetto, 
1917 



Destruction 
of shipping 



The United 
States joins 
the Allies 



Santo, and might soon strike through to open country 
at Laibach, and then march on toward Vienna. But the 
Austrians, reinforced by Germans, now massed against 
them, and, corrupting some of the discontented soldiers 
and thus making a weak point in the line, suddenly at- 
tacked with overwhelming numbers and with the fearful 
"mustard gas." They burst completely through, utterly 
defeating the Italians. The result of this battle of Capo- 
retto was that a large part of the Italian army was cap- 
tured and half of its artillery, with all the territory that it 
had gained in weary months of fighting. The Teutonic 
armies did not stop until they were nearly in sight of Venice; 
but then the Italians rallied with the courage of despair, 
and, by a magnificent effort, finally saved their country by 
standing along the little River Piave. None the less, Italy 
was now thoroughly discouraged, and almost persuaded to 
abandon the struggle. 

But more awful than any of these things was the 
havoc wrought by the submarines. As soon as un- 
restricted warfare was begun the losses were terrible. In 
February, 1917, 800,000 tons of shipping was destroyed, 
and the Mediterranean and the waters about the British 
Isles became a veritable graveyard of ships. If destruc- 
tion at this rate could be continued, then there was no 
doubt that the cause of the Allies was doomed, and that 
the end was not very far off. 

Against all this was to be set one great factor, which, in 
the end, was to counterbalance all the others: the United 
States had entered the conflict against Germany and her 
partners. When the Great War broke out there were 
probably not many Americans who believed that their 
country would ever be drawn into it. Many of the people 
understood little about the causes or issues of the struggle, 
and nearly all of them dreaded foreign complications and 
hated the thought of a war. But in less than three years 
the opinion of the great majority had changed profoundly, 



THE GREAT WAR 



485 



and by the beginning of 1917 they wilHngly followed their 
leader into the contest. There were several reasons for 
this. From the beginning people were struck with horror 
at the methods that the Germans employed. In Servia, 
in Poland, in Belgium, and in France, they began im- 
mediately to do harsh and terrible things. Civilians, 
including even women and children, were shot down; 
hostages were seized, ruinous fines were imposed for small 
offences. There was plundering and there was wild excess 
on the part of German soldiers. Evidently much of it was 
being done with the idea of organizing terror and striking 
into the hearts of the people such unreasoning fear that 
they would not dare in the smallest degree to interfere 
with the conquest of their country, and would perhaps 
flee away in wild disorder, clogging the roads and impeding 
the movements of their own armies. Many of the deeds 
perpetrated were so contrary to principles of humanity 
and to the spirit of western civilization, that at first the 
reports concerning them were not believed; but soon 
evidence accumulated in such manner that many of 
them could not be doubted. For an alleged offence, 
never proved and probably not committed, the great and 
ancient town of Louvain was fired and a large part of it 
burned to the ground. The German ambassador in 
Constantinople declared that if necessary the entire 
French nation would be held as hostage and starved to 
death in order to make England abandon the war. In 
Belgium the Germans methodically seized all the resources 
of the country, callously leaving the people to starve; and 
before long the Belgians would most probably have died 
of hunger had they not been fed by the charity of the 
British, the French, and the people of the United States. 
"In the Name of God the Father," ran the appeals for 
these people, while the disgraceful spectacle continued of a 
captive nation being fed not by the conquerors but by other 
nations. To Poland, outside relief could not come, and it 



Sentiment 
affected by 
German 
procedure 



Treatment 
of Belgium 



486 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Frightful- 
ness 



Danger to 
American 
ideals 



was not long before the appalling conditions there had 
caused the death of the old people and many of the children. 
This was commenced not when the Germans themselves 
were starving, but almost at the beginning of the war. 

The Cathedral of Rheims, one of the supreme examples 
of Gothic architecture and religious art, something that 
had been loved and admired for centuries, which could not 
be replaced, was not far from the line of battle. Because, 
as they said, it was used by the French as an observation 
post, the Germans deliberately ruined it with shells from 
their cannon. From the very beginning the great Ger- 
man airships, the Zeppelins, sailed aloft over the cities of 
England and France, dropping high explosives with fearful 
effect. Some military advantage was thereby procured, 
but the nature of air raids was such that the bombs were 
more apt to drop upon civilians than upon fortifications. 
In the same way German warships dashed out when 
they could and bombarded undefended coast towns, de- 
claring that they were fortresses, but actually for the 
purpose of striking terror into the people. The aversion 
with which all this was regarded was enhanced by dreadful 
stories told of the way in which prisoners in Germany 
were starved and abused; while the spectacle, constantly 
more frequent, of men, and even women and children, 
being drowned at sea, with no hope of rescue, and, 
indeed, the desire that they should be sunk "without a 
trace," constantly increased sympathy for the Allies and 
horror and dislike of the Germans. Finally, nothing 
did more to prejudice neutral opinion from the start than 
the manner in which the rights of Belgium were treated 
as "a scrap of paper" and that unhappy little country 
trampled in the dust. 

These were the things which gradually swayed the feel- 
ings of the mass of the people in the United States and 
elsewhere. But with the leaders there were considerations 
still more important. It was felt instinctively, and it was 



THE GREAT WAR 



487 



realized more and more clearly, that the people of France 
and England stood for much the same things that Ameri- 
cans did, and that the Germans represented a different 
system. Evidently there was now going on in Europe a 
death struggle between the two. If the ideals of democ- 
racy, individualism, and personal liberty went down to 
destruction across the Atlantic, they would afterward 
most probably be in grave danger in the United States. 
Then, in the opinion of many, the American people would 
later on have to fight against German encroachment even 
as the people of France and England were fighting now. 
By the beginning of 1917 it began to seem that Allied vic- 
tory was not to be hoped for. Therefore, every considera- 
tion of prudence seemed to urge that Americans join in 
the conflict and fight along with their friends, rather than 
later on fight alone against a mightier, triumphant Ger- 
man Empire. These feelings became constantly stronger, 
and at last many people felt that it was not only shameful 
but very dangerous for the United States to remain neutral 
so long. It will always be matter of opinion whether the 
American Government might not better have declared war 
sooner than it did; but perhaps the President was right 
in waiting for public sentiment to support him. Early in 
1917 he himself took the lead, and when the German 
ambassador delivered his note announcing unrestricted 
submarine warfare President Wilson advised that rela- 
tions with Germany be severed, and that assistance be 
given to the Allies with all of America's resources. April 
6, 1917, the United States declared war. It was one of 
the most momentous events in the history of the American 
people. Their intervention was destined to determine the 
issue of the struggle. 

America alone could supply the vast resources needed 
to defeat the Central Powers. The Germans had not 
only the advantage of position and the shorter lines, but 
greater resources in iron and coal, and hence in munitions 



Dangerous 
for America 
to remain out 
of the war 



The 
United 
States 
prepares 



488 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Immense 
resources 
of the 
United 
States 



The sub- 
marines 
checked 



of war. But with the accession of the United States the 
Alhes again became definitely superior in these basic re- 
sources, and if only there were still enough time and if 
only they did not lose heart and give up the struggle, 
victory would almost certainly be theirs. At first, how- 
ever, it seemed that there might not be time for the 
United States to assemble her resources and bring them 
to bear in Europe, and that she had, indeed, entered the 
struggle too late. It had taken England two years to 
bring her great strength to bear; it would probably take 
the Americans as long. They did begin with an energy 
and immensity of effort that left no doubt that they had re- 
solved to give themselves entirely to the task; but through- 
out 1917, while the Allies were meeting with such disaster in 
Europe, the work of the United States was almost entirely 
preparation. Great armies were raised by compulsory 
service; the making of rifles, cannon, shells, and the build- 
ing of ships were begun on an unheard-of scale, but nothing 
would be ready for some time. Meanwhile, the Germans 
hoped to win the war by means of their submarines, or 
else by one more great stroke in the west. 

By the beginning of 1918 the Germans had definitely 
failed in one respect. No single device was ever found 
for disposing of the submarines, but gradually they were 
subdued. The protection of warships had long since 
been effected by putting around them a screen of fast- 
moving destroyers. As soon as the United States entered 
the lists her navy joined in the work. The naval supe- 
riority of the Allies was for the first time beyond all ques- 
tion, and the addition of the American destroyers made it 
possible to protect "convoys" of merchant ships also. The 
rate of destruction was now much diminished. Moreover, 
a new and terrible device was employed with considerable 
effect, the depth bomb, which exploded beneath the water 
with fearful effect. Furthermore, a vast "barrage" of 
mines was laid in the North Sea, hindering the exit of the 



THE GREAT WAR 



489 



German submarines, and in 1918 the British, in daring 
raids, succeeded in partly blocking the Belgian harbors 
out of which the submarines came. Finally, the Allied 
submarines lay in wait for those of the enemy, and, 
assisted by airplanes, destroyed a large number of them. 
Altogether, the German under- water craft became much 
less dangerous and effective, and while they continued to 
be a serious menace until the end of the war, yet by the 
beginning of 1918 the Germans could no longer hope to 
win by them solely. 

Thus the Allies would have time, and time was now on 
their side. There might still be a long and costly war if 
the Germans stood on the defensive and fought with the 
protection of their fortified lines; though if the attack was 
resolutely pushed their ultimate defeat was certain. On 
the other hand, they still had one chance to win : if they 
could strike on the west front before American aid arrived, 
it might be that they would do what they had failed to do 
in the beginning, and that victory would still be theirs. 
This chance they resolved to take, and all through the 
winter of 1917-18 there was a constant movement of 
troops and guns from the east to the west. Russia was 
completely broken, and only such forces were left there 
as were needed to guard the conquests and get such scanty 
supplies as that ruined country could furnish. In truth 
the war had reached the stage where all the contestants 
were nearly exhausted. Italy was recovering from the 
defeat of Caporetto, but she was profoundly discouraged. 
France, who had so long borne the brunt of the struggle, 
had lost a great part of all her young men, and French- 
men, though unwilling to yield, were beginning to despair 
of ever defeating the foe. Britain also was nearly sunk 
beneath the burdens she bore, and the fearful fighting 
of 1917 had greatly depleted her armies in France. On 
the other side Austria was at her last gasp and able to 
do little more. Germany, with all her strength organized 



Exhaustion 
near 



The 

strength of 
the combat- 
ants nearly 
gone 



490 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Ger- 
man offen- 
sive, 1918 



The Battle 
of Picardy 



The British 
with "backs 
to the wall" 



for war, might fight on for some time, perhaps, and might 
even conquer by a sudden blow, but if she struck the blow 
and failed, then, as after events were to show, her power 
would crash down at once into ruin. 

As Napoleon had once done, Germany's leaders resolved 
to stake all upon one stroke. In the spring of 1918 she 
took the offensive and struck out with a blow that was like 
unloosing the forces of hell. March 21, the Germans 
attacked from St. Quentin, at a point where the British 
had recently taken over the lines from the French. The 
British were not yet familiar with their ground, and a 
heavy mist enabled the enemy to surprise them. Shells 
from the great guns fell far behind the front lines, while 
light cannon and countless machine guns were brought up 
by the attackers. The British were beaten as never be- 
fore during the war, and for the first time on the west- 
ern front fortified lines were broken completely. The 
German plan had been to separate the French from the 
British, and drive the British back upon the Channel where 
they could have been destroyed; but to the north, about 
Arras, the British lines held so that this was by no means 
accomplished. None the less, the Germans had broken 
clear through, and when at last their advance was arrested, 
they had gone more than thirty miles, up to the out- 
skirts of the all-important railroad center, Amiens. 
Scarcely had the fighting died down when another fearful 
blow was struck farther north. The lines were raked 
with shells and every position drenched with gases. In 
Armentieres the streets ran with the liquid of the mustard 
gas. An overwhelming force was thrown against the 
British again, and they were driven back so far that Sir 
Douglas Haig, their commander, told them they were 
fighting with "backs to the wall." But they fought as the 
British usually do fight, and, with some aid from the French, 
held on and barred the way to the Channel. This was in 
April. In May came the third phase of the German 



THE GREAT WAR 



491 



offensive, this time against the French lines. In one 
great rush they went through the position of Chemin des 
Dames, and piercing far through the hnes, rushed on until 
once more they came to the Marne. It was evident that 
the crisis of the war had come. If the Germans could, 
from the positions they had taken, strike out again with 
the same success, they might next time get as far as 
Paris. Under stress of the fearful peril all the Allied 
armies were at last put under one command, under the 
great French general Foch, and cries went out to the 
United States to hasten her succor. 

The Americans had made giant strides in their vast 
preparations, but the best judges abroad did not expect 
them to be ready yet. Now, however, the need was so 
pressing that they were asked to send across troops only 
partly trained. This was done. The British furnished 
most of the shipping, from their own diminished stock, and, 
protected by warships from the submarines, there now 
began across the ocean a movement of men such as had 
never been seen before in the world. Early in July there 
were a million American soldiers in France, and they were 
now coming at the rate of more than a quarter of a million 
each month. And more than that, as they were tried, at 
first in very small operations, they bore themselves so well 
as to give much hope for the future. Evidently there was 
not much more time for the Germans to get the decision 
before the weight of America was felt. Twice again did 
the Germans strike, with less success than before. Then 
July 14 their last offensive was undertaken. Between 
Rheims and Chateau-Thierry the attack was delivered and 
an effort made to cross the Marne and open the road to 
Paris. But the German plans had become known, and the 
French, giving ground a little, smothered the abandoned 
positions in a whirlwind of fire, and after terrible losses 
the Germans were brought completely to a stand. 

Four days later, July 18, Marshal Foch began a great 



America 
answers the 
caU 



Last effort 
of the Ger- 
mans: 
Second Bat- 
tle of the 
Marne 



492 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Beginning 
of the Allied 
offensive 



Great as- 
sault on the 
German 
lines 



Allied offensive. The assistance from the United States 
had enabled him to establish a reserve and again assemble 
an "army of maneuver." The Germans had driven 
three salients into his line, and in these salients they had 
the inner position and the short lines, but between the 
two greater salients, in the region from Montdidier to 
Soissons, the Allies had the same advantage. Accordingly 
it was from this part of the line that the Allied offensive 
began. A sudden attack by French troops and some 
Americans nearly captured Soissons, and threatened with 
gravest peril the German forces under the Crown Prince. 
After many days of desperate fighting these forces were 
extricated, but with heavy losses and after abandoning 
what they had taken in the successful stroke that had 
brought them down to the Marne. Meanwhile, August 
8, the British struck out at Montdidier, at the side of the 
salient to the north, and, capturing many prisoners and 
many important places, retook what they had lost in the 
disaster of March. Daring the same time the Germans 
abandoned without fighting the blood-soaked positions 
captured at such terrible cost when they tried to break 
through to the Channel, By the end of August, there- 
fore, the great danger was past, and the Germans had 
definitively lost the offensive. 

The question now was whether it would be better to 
wait until the following year, or press hard upon the de- 
feated Germans and try to end the war shortly. Great 
as was the assistance of America, it would not be until 
1919 that she could exert her full force. Then she could 
have millions of soldiers fully equipped, a vast number of 
airplanes, and an incredible supply of artillery. German 
spies carried news of the colossal preparations to their 
country, and it was reported that a far more deadly gas 
than any used hitherto was being made in quantities 
larger than gases were made in all the other warring 
countries combined. Next year all this could be used. 



THE GREAT WAR 



493 



But Marshal Foch, understanding the situation more 
clearly, resolved to continue the attack, and the fighting 
went on without any cessation. 

September 13, in their first large operation, the Amer- 
icans wiped out the St. Mihiel salient which the Germans 
had driven to the south of Verdun in the early weeks of 
the war. Later on now it would be possible to attack the 
great German fortress of Metz. A fortnight later a 
large American army began fighting to clear the Argonne 
Forest, which was the great buttress of the German lines 
in the south, and which protected one of their all- 
important lines of railroad communication. In the center 
the French did not press the attack upon the impregnable 
positions about Laon, but in the north the British with 
some Americans and some Belgians tried to smash 
through the Hindenburg Line in one place and in another 
break down into Flanders. It was the Germans who 
were now with their backs to the wall. 

The failing German fortunes were accompanied by col- 
lapse everywhere else. The Allied army which in October, 
1915, had landed at Salonica had never accomplished 
anything, largely because it could not be strongly rein- 
forced and because the submarines constantly harassed 
its communication line. But now, in September, 1918, 
it suddenly fell upon the Bulgars, and broke through their 
positions. In a few days the Serbs were back once more 
in their country, and the Allies were threatening the 
Bulgarian plain. By the end of the month Bulgaria had 
signed an armistice agreement equivalent to complete 
surrender. Turkey, long since exhausted, and just 
defeated in Asia by the British, was now in a hopeless 
position, and her surrender soon followed. This brought 
to an end the German dream of domination in the Balkans 
and of founding a great "Middle Europe." In October, 
the Austrians, urged on by the Germans, but with almost 
no power left, attacked the Italians, failed completely, 



The Ameri- 
cans and 
the British 
go forward 



Germany's 
allies sur- 
render 



The Italians 
destroy 
Austria's 
power 



494 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Ger- 
mans com- 
pletely 
defeated 



The British 
break the 
Hindenburg 
Line 



The German 
armies in 
danger of 
destruction 



and then, struck by the Italian armies, suffered the 
greatest disaster of the war. The entire Austrian forces 
surrendered or fled as disorganized rabble, abandoning 
their stores and cannon. In a few days the Italians were 
through the mountains at last, at Trieste, in the Trentino, 
and on the march for Vienna. November 4, Austria- 
Hungary surrendered. The Germans now fought alone. 
While these disasters were ruining the German cause, 
they were fighting the last of their fight. Steadily through 
the tangled thickets, the rocks, and the mazes of barbed 
wire of the Argonne, the new American army was fighting 
against the inferior German force; and though their losses 
were very heavy, they advanced steadily, capturing posi- 
tions deemed impregnable hitherto, and presently getting 
the main railway line, the vital line of German communica- 
tions in the south, under the fire of their long-range guns. 
If this line were cut, a large part of the German army 
might be forced to surrender. To the north the British 
and their comrades, with as splendid dash as was ever 
seen during the war, broke at last all through the Hinden- 
burg Line, with its wide trenches, its deep underground 
fortifications, its labyrinths of barbed wire, and its thou- 
sands of machine-gun emplacements. Here the courage 
of the British soldier was aided by the "tanks" or small 
moving fortresses, which the British had first used in the 
Somme offensive of 1916, and which at last solved the 
problem of smashing the systems of entrenchments. 
Moreover, they now broke through in Belgium and oc- 
cupied the coast with its submarine bases. Then, turning 
south, they began to threaten the other great artery of 
German rail communications, the trunk line from Paris 
to Berlin, which goes through the valley of the Meuse, by 
Namur and Liege. If this should be cut, and if the Ameri- 
cans cut the other line in the south, then the Germans 
might be forced to surrender on the field or else save them- 
selves only by a flight like that of the Austrian armies. 



THE GREAT WAR 



495 



The German soldiers, so wonderful in the days of suc- 
cess, began to waver now, and disaffection and despair 
increased among the German people. They had been 
slowly starved by the blockade, and, after staking all they 
had, they had lost. Widespread discontent was abetted 
by bolshevist propaganda from the east, ever insidiously 
crossing the frontier. The men of the navy, ordered to 
dash out for a last effort, mutinied. The end was at 
hand. The authorities asked for an armistice, but Presi- 
dent Wilson, answering for the Allies, replied in effect 
that the Germans could not be trusted, and that the only 
conditions to be granted would be such that if the Ger- 
mans should later on wish to resume the war they would 
not be able to do so. When the conditions were an- 
nounced, they were terrible enough: not only must the 
Germans at once evacuate France, Belgium, and their 
other conquests, but they must abandon Alsace-Lorraine 
and withdraw behind the Rhine, leaving the bridgehead 
fortresses to the Allies, and giving up their richest indus- 
trial district. They must surrender their fleet and their 
submarines, disband their army, and give up most of 
their military equipment. It was evident at once that 
the acceptance of such terms would mean the end of the 
war. Revolution and disturbances now arose in various 
parts of the Reich. November 9, the German emperor 
abdicated and fled to Holland. Two days later, November 
11, German emissaries signed the armistice terms. The 
most terrible of all wars had ended. 



The Ger- 
man Em- 
pire sur- 
renders 



Conditions 
of the armis- 
tice granted 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



General accounts: for brief narratives — S. B. Harding, A 
Syllabus of the Great War (1918); C. J. H. Hayes, A Brief History 
of the Great War (1920); A. F. Pollard, A Short History of the 
Great War (1920); also F. A. March, History of the World War 
(1918); D. W. Johnson, Topography and Strategy in the War 
(1917); longer accounts are John Buchan, Nelson's History of 



496 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

the War (1915-); F. H. Simonds, The Great War, 5 volumes 
(1914-20), perhaps the best of the longer, non-technical ac- 
counts. Several periodical histories were undertaken by great 
metropolitan journals : London Times History of the War, Man- 
chester Guardian History of the War, New York Times Current 
History of the War, voluminous and discursive, but with a vast 
amount of interesting information. Of the longer histories 
the most important are the British History of the Great War 
Based on Official Documents (1920-); Guerre de 1914 : Docu- 
ments Officiels, Textes Legislatifs et Reglementaires (1914—), 
official publication of the French Government; Der Grosse 
Krieg in Einzeldarstellungen, which appeared in parts from time 
to time, published by the German Great General Staff (now 
disbanded). Many excellent and interesting histories have al- 
ready appeared abroad: C. H. Baer, Der Volkerkrieg (1915-); 
G. Hanotaux, Histoire Ulustree de la Guerre de 191^; H. F. Hel- 
molt, Der Weltkrieg (1915-); F. M. Kircheisen, Das Vblker- 
ringen, l9lJf-15 (1915-); Hermann Stegemann, Geschichte des 
Krieg es, volumes I-III (1917-19), excellent. 

Accounts by principal commanders: General Erich von Fal- 
kenhayn, trans. General Headquarters, 1911^—1916, and Its 
Critical Decisions (1919); Field Marshal Viscount French, 191^ 
(1919) ; General Basil Gourko, Memories and Impressions of War 
and Revolution in Russia, 1914--1917 (1918); Sir Douglas Haig's 
Despatches {December, 1915-April, 1919), edited by Lieut.-Col. 
J. H. Boraston (1919); General Erich Ludendorff, My War 
Memories, 191Jf-1918, 2 vols. (1919), excellent comments on 
strategy and great events in the conflict. 

Particular episodes or campaigns : Von Auffenberg-Komarow, 
Aus Osterreich-Ungarns Theilnahme am Weltkriege (1920), by 
one of the Austrian commanders; General-Major Baumgarten- 
Crusius, Die Marneschlacht (1919), very important, based on 
German official documents; General Berthaut, "L'Erreur" 
de 19H, RSponseaux Critiques (1919); E. Bircher, Die Schlacht 
an der Marne (1918), major in the General Staff of the Ger- 
man array; John Buchan, The Battle of the Somme (1917); Gen- 
eral Luigi Capello, Note di Guerra (1920), for Italy's part; 
Memoires de General Gallieni, Defense de Paris (1920); Louis 
Gillet, La Bataille de Verdun (1920); Sidney Low, Italy in the 
War (1917); Louis Madelin, La Victoire de la Marne (1916), 
trans., perhaps the best account for the general reader; John 
Masefield, Gallipoli (1916); Major-General Sir F. Maurice, 



THE GREAT WAR 497 

Forty Days in 19U (1919); H. W. Nevinson, The Dardanelles 
Campaign (1918); [anonymous], Pourquoi VAllemagne a Capi- 
tuU le 11 Novembre 1918 (1919), evidently based on documents 
in possession of the French General Headquarters; G. Prezzolini 
Caporetto (1919); Raymond Recouly, Foch; le Vainqueur de la 
Guerre (1919); Lieut. -Col. Rousset, La Baiaille de VAisne 
(Avril-Mai, 1917) (1919), for the Nivelle offensive; D. Sanco- 
vici. La Paix de Bucharest (1919); Lieut.-Col. de Thomasson, 
Le Revers de 1914 et Ses Causes (1919). 

The war on the sea: Charles Domville-Fife, Submarines and 
Sea Power (1919), excellent; Admiral Lord Jellicoe, The Grand 
Fleet, 191^-1916 (1918), a very important book. The Crisis of 
the Naval War (1920); J. Leyland, The Royal Navy (1914); 
Captain L. Persius, Der Seekrieg (1919); Rear-Admiral W. S. 
Sims, The Victory at Sea (1920); Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, 
trans. My Memoirs, 2 vols. (1919). 

The war in the air: Major Charles C. Turner, The Struggle in 
the Air, 19U-1918 (1919). 

America and the war: Lindsay Rogers, America's Case Against 
Germany (1917), a good brief account; Diplomatic Correspondence 
Between the United States and Germany, August 1, 19 1^- April 6, 
1917, edited by J. B. Scott (1919); Lieut.-Col. de Chambrun 
and Captain de Marenches, L'Armee Amiricaine dans le Confiit 
Europien (1919), excellent. 

The Allied soldiers, and especially the British, in the war: 
Philip Gibbs, Now It Can Be Told (1920), a book that deserves 
the widest possible reading. 

German practices in the war: Die Deutsche Kriegsfiihrung 
und das Volkerrecht (1919), a German official publication at- 
tempting justification; Hugh Gibson, A Journal from Our 
Legation in Belgium (1917); S. S. McClure, Obstacles to Peace 
(1917); Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthaus Story 
(1918); A. J. Toynbee, The German Terror in Belgium (1917), 
The German Terror in France (1917); Brand Whitlock, Belgium: 
a Personal Narrative, 2 vols. (1919), excellent. 

The neutrals: Luis Bello, Espana durante la Guerra (1919). 

Peace proposals: G. L. Dickinson, Documents arid Statements 
Relating to Peace Proposals and War Aims (December, 1916— 
November, 1918) (1919). 



The settle- 
ment after 
the war 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be 
planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. 

Address of President Wilson to the Congress of the United 
States, April 2, 1917. 

The idea that action should be taken after this war to secure an 
enduring peace in the future. . . . 
Viscount Bryce, Essays and Addresses in War Time (1918), p. 
176. 

We know that the 'power of the German arms is broken. We 
know the extent of the hatred which we encounter here. . . 
But we deny that Germany and its people were alone guilty. 
Count Brockdorff-Rantzau to the Plenipotentiaries at Ver- 
sailles, May 7, 1919. 

Not since Rome punished Carthage for Punic faith has such a treaty 
been written. 

New York Tribune, May 8, 1919. 

When the Germans, with weariness and despair at home 
and their armies crumbhng under the blows of the Alhes 
at the front, surrendered by accepting the armistice, it 
was evident that an old era in the history of the western 
world had come to an end, and that the leaders of the na- 
tions must assemble and settle the affairs of the age which 
had been and prepare for the new order that was com- 
ing. Several times had this happened before in the his- 
tory of Europe. In 1648, at the end of the dreadful 
Thirty Years War, a general settlement was made, of 
which the arrangement lasted for a long time thereafter. 
In 1713 and 1714 the powers which had fought out the 
War of the Spanish Succession arranged the division of 

498 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 499 



the Spanish inheritance and checked the encroachment 
of the monarchs of France. More important still, in 1814 
and 1815 the powers that had overthrown Napoleon as- 
sembled at Vienna to undo his work and the results of 
the French Revolution, reestablish legitimate princes, 
and divide Europe as seemed to them best. And so now 
in 1919 the greatest of all the peace conferences was 
opened in Paris. 

Never had a peace congress assembled in the midst of 
such general interest, or in the midst of such great and 
unreasoning expectations. In 1648 and 1712 the great 
mass of the people had no voice in government and little 
interest in what governments did. So it was in 1814, 
though then many people believed that a new and better 
era was at hand. But in 1919 the people of those states 
which had brought the Great War to victorious conclusion 
had considerable control of their governments ; most of the 
populations could read and write, and had followed the 
events of the struggle with enormous interest. Moreover, 
whatever the original aims of the contestants may have 
been, as the war progressed and became a contest of 
endurance and exhaustion, so that it was necessary to 
have the fullest support of the body of the people, such 
appeals were uttered and such promises made, that pres- 
ently to the people in Great Britain, Italy, France, and the 
United States the struggle seemed more and more a 
contest between militarism and autocracy on the one 
hand, and democracy and peaceful civilization on the 
other. Men were asked to throw themselves into the 
fighting now so that the world might be made "safe for 
democracy," and so that war with all its horrors might 
be brought to an end. Everywhere the masses of the 
people, the simple minded, the liberal, the idealists, 
yearned for these things and believed that they would 
shortly come to pass, and that a new and a better world 
was about to be brought into being. 



Public inter- 
est and ex- 
pectations 



Unbounded 

popular 

hopes 



500 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Presi- 
dent of the 
United 
States 



•'Foiirteen 
Points" 



At the head of these people in all of the Allied countries, 
and to some extent even among the enemy, was President 
Wilson of the United States, the greatest idealist of his 
time. There was difference of opinion about the wisdom 
of his course before America entered the war, whether 
he should not have led the United States to take part in it 
long before she finally entered; and also about the pro- 
priety of some things which he afterward did; but there 
could be no doubt about the loftiness and purity of his 
motives, or that he had the good of mankind at heart. 
His speeches and his communications seemed to great 
numbers of people in the Allied countries, and perhaps 
even in Germany and Austria, to express the yearnings of 
their hearts for better things. So it came about that at 
the end of the war he had for a short while unparalleled 
influence among multitudes of people who trusted with 
pathetic confidence that he would in some way bring 
about the great reforms he had spoken of so finely, 
and which they believed would at once make the world 
far better than it ever had been in the past. Many of 
the people who spoke so confidently of the immense im- 
provements now suddenly to be made had thought little 
about the difficulty of achieving them, and knew not that 
some of these things were old problems which had baffled 
mankind for ages. 

In January, 1918, just before the last crisis of the struggle. 
President Wilson, in an address to Congress, had outlined 
the "Fourteen Conditions" of what he regarded as proper 
peace. Here, in addition to saying that Russia should 
be evacuated, Belgium, France, Rumania, Servia, and 
Montenegro evacuated and restored, that Alsace-Lorraine 
should be returned to France, that the Italian frontier 
should be rectified, that a free Poland should be estab- 
lished, and that the subject peoples of Turkey and of 
Austria-Hungary should be given opportunity for autono- 
mous development, he declared that there must be an 










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THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 501 



impartial adjustment of colonial claims with consideration 
of the populations involved. He then entered upon wide 
and more difficult questions in saying that there must be 
"open covenants of peace, openly arrived at," and no 
more private international understandings; "absolute 
freedom of navigation upon the seas"; removal of eco- 
nomic barriers; guarantees for the reduction of arma- 
ments; and "a general association of nations" under 
specific covenants for the purpose of maintaining peace. 
Some of these provisions were at once criticized as vague 
or liable to evident objection, or impossible of fulfillment, 
but they were immediately accepted by multitudes who 
believed them to be practicable and necessary for the good 
of the world. 

Some of the matters here proclaimed did present 
enormous difficulty. To make treaties openly, or to bring 
diplomacy within the control of the representatives of the 
people, had been much desired by reformers for a long 
time and many efforts had been made to obtain it; but 
these efforts had failed for reasons well understood by 
some people. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
the English House of Commons had made repeated ef- 
forts to take control of foreign affairs, and when the first 
American government was instituted such control was 
given to Congress; but in both countries it was presently 
obvious to those who studied the matter that, conditions 
being what they were, secrecy was necessary for the 
proper conduct of foreign relations, which was impossible 
if they were communicated to a large legislative as- 
sembly; and that such business could only be transacted 
effectively if left to the management of a small number of 
experienced and expert men. 

More immediately troublesome was the question of the 
"freedom of the seas." This was a cry which had been 
raised by the Germans during the war, and from them 
taken up by pacifists and idealists everywhere, who believed 



For an 

enduring 

peace 



Control of 

foreign 

affairs 



"Freedom 
of the Seas'? 



502 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Militarism 

and 

navalism 



A league of 
nations 



The Con- 
gress of 
Paris, 1919 



that there ought not to be any miHtarism or force either 
on sea or on land. Actually, however, the application of 
such a doctrine would principally affect Great Britain and 
the British Empire, whose principal strength and sole 
reliance was naval power. Britain had won her wars and 
become great through power on the sea, and her strength 
there was so great that she had long been mistress of the 
seas. But it was generally admitted that she had not 
abused this power, and in time of peace had not for a 
great while interfered with other nations upon the waters. 
In time of war she had not seldom exerted her sea-power 
with decisive effect; but it was owing to this very agency 
that the Allies had been able to resist Germany with 
any success, and British sea-power had been the corner- 
stone of their alliance. It was certain that the British 
people would regard any attempt to deprive them of it as 
a thrust at their very existence. 

With respect to what was being called a league of 
nations, a long line of men, from Henry IV of France and 
William Penn to Tsar Alexander I and Tsar Nicholas II, 
had hoped for such a thing; and many a plan had been 
suggested for it; but so far the perplexity of the problem 
had baffled all who attempted to solve it. 

The Congress of Paris, which assembled January 18, 
1919, began its work amidst unparalleled popular interest 
and in the midst of popular expectations that no assembly 
could have fulfilled. By the time its first session opened 
idealists, pacifists, humanitarians, and a vast number of 
others who were enthusiastic but ill-informed, had come 
to believe that such a peace treaty was about to be made 
and such a settlement of the affairs of the world, that all 
the damage done by the war would be amended, yet little 
or nothing taken from Austria-Hungary and the German 
Empire; that the Allies would be made content, yet the 
Central Powers in no wise offended ; that reparation should 
be made, yet no indemnities taken; that self-determination 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 503 



of peoples would be recognized, yet Germany and Austria 
not be shorn of their possessions; and they believed now 
that open diplomacy would be established, democracy and 
the welfare of the masses, that there would be freedom of 
the seas, no more war, and a league of nations with good 
feeling and the brotherhood of men. He who seemed to 
represent the possibility of all of these aspirations was 
President Wilson. As he visited London, Paris, and Rome 
he was received with an acclaim such as no American in 
Europe ever had had. In the estimate of the people he 
was the foremost leader and citizen in the world. On the 
other hand, a smaller number, though not a few, with 
better knowledge of affairs and of what had been done in 
the past, predicted that some of the proposals current were 
irreconcilable and others impossible of fulfilment, that the 
procedure of the Congress must of necessity be much 
like what had taken place at Vienna and Berlin, that the 
principal business would be to settle the questions which 
the Great War had brought forth, and that with respect 
to the grander and more general schemes the utmost 
possible was for the best men to try earnestly and in good 
faith to solve some part of the difficulties which had re- 
mained insoluble so long. 

From the countries which had participated in the war 
against the Central Powers came delegates to the Confer- 
ence at Paris. There was to be made a treaty which, 
when ready, would be submitted to Germany at Versailles, 
and others that would be offered to her recent allies. 
Neither Germany nor her allies were to take part in the 
discussion nor the framing of the treaties, which were to 
be submitted merely for acceptance or rejection. From 
January to May the delegates and their advisers deliber- 
ated on the matters before them. 

Some of the more important matters were quickly 
decided. The great decisions were not arrived at openly 
or with the knowledge of the entire Conference. The very 



Generous 
idealism 



Personnel 



Procedure 



504 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The council 
of four 



Questions 
to be dealt 
with: the 
conquered 
powers 



temperament of President Wilson was such that he easily 
acceded to what was doubtless the only workable scheme: 
important affairs were first decided by the representatives 
of the five greatest powers, the British Empire, France, 
Italy, Japan, and the United States; after which they were 
made known to the other members of the Congress. 
Actually the principal work was always in the hands of 
four men, Mr. George, M. Clemenceau, Signor Orlando, 
prime ministers respectively of the United Kingdom, 
France, and Italy, and President Wilson. The question 
of the freedom of the seas was soon dropped, and wisely, 
as competent critics had hoped and predicted beforehand. 
With respect to the reduction of armaments little was 
done; the defeated powers were to be compelled to dimin- 
ish theirs and it was hoped that others would be able later 
to do likewise. None the less, there remained numerous 
difficult questions to be settled, which were all the more 
perplexing because this time, unlike what had taken place 
at Vienna and Berlin, the f ramers of the treaty would make 
an honest effort to face the difficulties and settle them, 
not evade them by some specious or convenient solution. 
First among the matters to be dealt with was the 
question of the treatment of the conquered powers. 
Some, who professed to be the prophets of a new era, 
declared that a peace of vengeance would only lead to new 
wars, and that mild treatment, or, as they called it, just 
treatment, which would not offend Germany and her 
friends but leave them content, was the only way to spare 
succeeding generations from the horrors that had blasted 
the present. Some of these people in the Allied countries, 
like Lenine and Trotzky in Russia, proclaimed that there 
must be no annexations and no indemnities. A larger 
number said that Germany and Austria must repair the 
devastation they had wrought in the invaded countries, 
but that was all. There were not a few who asserted that 
the people of the Teutonic countries were little, if any, 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 505 



more to be blamed than the others, since it was the greed of 
imperiahsts and capitaHsts, and the rashness of diplo- 
mats working in secret, which had brought on the war, 
and these baneful influences had been strong in all the 
countries concerned. On the other hand were a great 
many who had come to fear and to hate the Germans more 
than any people for generations had been hated. They 
declared that Germany and her allies must be stripped to 
the uttermost to pay for the infinite woe they had caused. 
It was vain, they said, to try to conciliate such people by 
mild treatment; an enduring peace could be obtained, if 
at all, only by so reducing her power that Germany could 
not make unprovoked attacks in the future. Some of 
these advocates proposed that to France should be given 
German territory down to the Rhine, and that Germany 
should be compelled to pay the entire cost of the war. 
This last was obviously impossible. The war had 
cost the Allies more than $120,000,000,000, perhaps 
$200,000,000,000, including all indirect losses; but the 
total wealth remaining to the German Empire was per- 
haps not more than $50,000,000,000 

The question of the German colonies attracted less 
attention. Some declared that they ought under no 
circumstances to be taken away, since the Germans needed 
colonial possessions; they had never had their fair share, 
and this was one of the causes of the war. On the other 
hand, it was vehemently asserted that the Germans had 
most cruelly misused the native populations, and were 
unworthy to be entrusted with ruling them any longer. 

The question of Alsace-Lorraine was not really before 
the Conference, since the French had already occupied 
the provinces, and were not willing to discuss the matter 
further. They said they were merely taking back what 
had once been wrested from them. But the whole ques- 
tion was very complicated, and had already been a great 
deal discussed. There could be no doubt that while a 



Leniency 
and severity 
urged 



The German 
colonies 



Alsace- 
Lorraine 



506 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



A 

debatable 

land 



The Italian 
frontier 



Italians and 
Jugo-Slavs 



portion of the people in Lorraine were French, most of the 
rest were Germans. The districts had long been attached 
to the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans, from which 
they were taken mostly by force by the French, under 
Louis XIV and Louis XV. On the other hand, this terri- 
tory had originally been part of a middle kingdom be- 
tween Germany and France, which had presently fallen to 
pieces. There was also no doubt that, after their in- 
corporation into the kingdom of France, the people of the 
provinces became strongly attached to the French Govern- 
ment, took prominent part in the French Revolution, and 
thoroughly shared in the development of French nation- 
ality then, so that in 1871 they were most unwilling to be 
taken by Germany from France. The question was further 
complicated because of the great strategic importance 
of the country, in the hands of either Germany or France, 
and because in Lorraine lay the most valuable iron-ore 
deposits in Europe, 

The question of the Italian frontier seemed relatively 
simple, though, in the end, it proved difficult to arrange. 
It was generally conceded that Italia Irredenta should be 
taken from the broken Dual Monarchy, but the extent of the 
lands to be taken proved difficult to settle. There was no 
doubt about the Trentino, nor about Trieste, though that 
port was Austria's sole outlet to the sea; but all down the 
Dalmatian coast, on the eastern side of the Adriatic, were 
old Italian towns and a fringe of Italian population, while 
the great mass of the people, in the country behind, were 
South Slavs. The islands and the seaport districts were, 
indeed, largely unredeemed Italian land, but if they were 
all given to Italy then an outlying fringe of Italians would 
shut off from the sea a far greater number of Jugo-Slavs. 
Actually, because of the broad untracked Dinaric Alps, 
just back from the coast, the South Slavic people would be 
effectually shut off from the sea if they did not obtain 
Fiume, inhabited mainly by Italians. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 



507 



The question of the Czechs and the Slovaks had not 
until recently been much discussed, but became promi- 
nent just before peace was made. Bohemia and Moravia, 
which had been independent kingdoms in the Middle Ages, 
then joined under one ruler, were united with Austria in 
1526, the same year that part of Hungary also was joined 



The Czechs 



< 

G E R M A N Y^ 



\.y/:!^///////W-C _^ MORAVIA ../-A 
^// Kremnitz-> 



'iwPresbuh 

^^ A U S T R I k/ '^" 



"^.1^ 







32. CZECHO-SLOVAKIA 



with Austria. The people were mostly West Slavs, and a 
body of their near kinsmen, the Slovaks, lived just to the jj^g Slovaks 
east in Hungary. The Slovaks had remained a back- 
ward people, but the Czechs and Moravians had an old 
culture of which they were proud; and during the nine- 
teenth century they had revived a strong national feeling. 
They had not desired independence so much as autonomy, 



508 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Poland 



The greater 
Poland of 
old 



but in 1867 they had seen the Dual Monarchy established 
in which only the Germans and the Magyars were to rule. 
Accordingly, discontent had increased, and during the Great 
War their troops deserted the Austrian armies whenever 
they could. A body of Czecho-Slovak troops, which had 
surrendered to the Russians, had just taken a conspicuous 
part in resisting the Bolsheviki. 

The question of Poland had been much discussed, and it 
had evoked a great deal of interest. The tragic fate of the 
Polish people had for some generations aroused deepest 
sympathy among the statesmen of western Europe and 
among liberals all over the world. To reestablish Poland 
had long seemed a most desirable act of international 
justice, but the difficulties in the way were so insu- 
perable that a new Polish state was outside the cal- 
culations of practical statesmen. By the strangest of 
coincidences, all three of the powers that had once 
divided Poland were ruined by the war. At the very 
beginning of the struggle the Russian Government, allied 
wath the Western Powers, had promised the Poles 
autonomy, under the tsar. Then the country had been 
conquered by the Teutons; Russia had been ruined and the 
tsar was dead. Now, at last, the Teutonic powers them- 
selves were prostrate. There was little dijfference of 
opinion about the reconstitution of Poland, but much 
difficulty in determining what the boundaries should be. 
In former times Poland had greatly extended her borders 
so that Polish population was widely scattered and mixed 
in with other peoples. Therefore it was not possible 
to fix boundaries that would include all the Poles and 
not many Germans, Lithuanians, and others, or such 
boundaries as would include only Poles without leaving a 
great many of them outside the new state. Moreover, 
Poland had formerly extended to the Baltic. If now she 
were given her outlet to the sea at Danzig, then Prussia 
would be divided into two parts. 




33. THE BALKANS IN 1920 



509 



510 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Jugo- 
slavs 



The question of the South Slavs presented no funda- 
mental difficulty. It was generally agreed that the Jugo- 
slavs formerly oppressed in the southern districts of 
Austria and Hungary, the people of the provinces of 
Carniola, Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and 
Herzegovina, should be given their freedom, and there 



dARlNTHIA 




34. JUGO-SLAVIA 



Projected 
union of 
them all 



was already a movement on foot to have them all unite 
with their kinsmen of Montenegro and Servia in a large 
Jugo-Slavic state. It would undoubtedly be difficult to 
hold in one union these people, of the same race indeed, 
but differing much in culture and religion. The im- 
mediate difficulty, however, was to reconcile confficting 
ambitions of Italians and South Slavs on the Adriatic 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 511 



Business of 
the Con- 
gress 



coast, and assure the new federation an outlet to the 
sea. 

The question of Constantinople and the Turkish Empire constan- 
presented such enormous difficulties that for the most tinople and 
part it was postponed as long as could be. Many thought Turkey 
it well to take from the Turks all their possessions except 
Anatolia in Asia Minor, their real home, and then free the 
subjects whom they had so misruled or distribute the 
territories among Britain, France, Italy, and Greece. But 
Constantinople, as always, was so mighty a prize that there 
was no agreement as to who should have it, and some 
thought the best solution was to let the Turks still remain. 

Since the proceedings of the inner council of the Congress 
of Paris were largely secret, the greatest matters being 
settled, as at Vienna, in private meetings between the 
great men, the motives and procedure that prevailed will 
long be partly the subject of conjecture. It is believed 
that at opposite extremes were President Wilson and 
Premier Clemenceau. The American statesman stood 
for the high ideals and the liberal ideas which the long 
struggle had quickened in the hearts of the best people, 
but he seems to have been without great knowledge of 
European statecraft and conditions, and often hampered 
by insufficient information. He stood first for justice. 
He beheved that an enduring peace could best be obtained 
by hberal terms. He desired, above all, that the present 
opportunity for establishing a league of nations should 
not be allowed to pass, so that governments might there- 
after settle their differences by reason and justice, and 
not by war. The aged French premier was wise with the Clemenceau 
wisdom of long experience and service. Apparently he had 
none too great faith in a league of nations, but was willing 
to assist in establishing one, provided that he was able 
to assure the safety of France for the future. Twice in his 
life had France been invaded by the Germans and terribly 
ravaged, and now he was resolved upon measures so stern 



512 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Treaty 
of Versailles 



The 
Covenant 



that it would not be likely to happen again. In be- 
tween these two were the Italian premier, with no very 
striking policy aside from Italy's interests, it would seem, 
and Mr. Lloyd George, one of the great liberal leaders 
of the world, who had been very near to the horror and 
tragedy of the conflict, and who now used his matchless 
skill in reconciling the divergent views of Clemenceau and 
Wilson. 

May 7, the Treaty having been drawn up was pre- 
sented to the German representatives at Versailles. Their 
leader made a dramatic declaration for his country, not 
without eloquence and pathos, acknowledging Germany's 
defeat, but declaring that not the German people alone but 
the old system of European imperialism was responsible for 
the coming of the war. June 28 the Treaty was signed. 
In a document as long as an ordinary book the a£Fairs 
of Germany, Europe, and the world were settled, it was 
thought, for the time. 

At the beginning of the Treaty of Versailles, and a part 
of it, was the Covenant, or agreement, of a League of 
Nations designed "to promote international cooperation, 
and to achieve international peace and security, . . . 
through open, just, and honorable international relations." 
At first the members of the League were to be the powers 
now signing the treaty, while the remaining South 
American states and the neutral countries of Europe were 
invited to join. The seat of the League was to be Geneva. 
It was to act through an assembly in which each member 
was to have one vote, and a council, consisting of members 
representing the greater powers. The particular business 
of the Council was to be the planning a reduction of arma- 
ments "to the lowest point consistent with safety," and 
especially the taking of measures for preventing war. If 
there arose any dispute which threatened war it must be 
submitted to arbitration or inquiry by the Council, nor in 
any case should there be resort to war until three months 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 513 



after decision, which must be rendered within a reasonable 
time. If a member of the League resorted to war in defi- 
ance of these provisions, he was to be regarded as commit- 
ting an act of war against all the members of the League, 
who should sever relations with him and take measures to 
enforce the agreement. It was further provided that 
members should abrogate all treaties inconsistent with 
the provisions of the League, and that all other treaties 
and engagements should be published. Article 10 pro- 
vided that, "The Members of the League undertake to 
respect and preserve as against external aggression the 
territorial integrity and existing political independence of 
all Members of the League. In case of any such aggres- 
sion or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression, 
the Council shall advise upon the means by which this 
obligation shall be fulfilled." This was afterward the 
object of much criticism as a provision to keep things as 
they were, and make impossible necessary revolution and 
change, much as had been said of the Holy Alliance a 
century before; but it was difficult to see how such a pro- 
vision could be dispensed with, and it was hoped that 
proper changes would be brought about, when necessary, 
by voluntary action of the League or its members. 
Another article of vast possibilities for good, but compli- 
cated with great difficulties also, proclaimed that the mem- 
bers should secure fair and humane labor conditions every- 
where, control traffic in women and children, in opium and 
other drugs, in arms and ammunition, and give just treat- 
ment to native populations. That this Covenant contained 
defects was not to be doubted, and many objections 
were easily raised against it. But it was evident that 
numerous objections might always be made with respect 
to any great constructive effort involving changes, as had 
been the case with the adoption of the Constitution of the 
United States, the great reforms of the French Revolu- 
tion, the passing of the British electoral reform laws. 



Article 10 



Article 23 



514 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Treaty 
with Ger- 
many 



Germany's 
losses 



and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, Whatever 
its defects, many people believed that here was at least an 
honest attempt to make the world better, a scheme that 
would be altered and improved as the result of experience 
and in the course of time, if people tried their best to make 
it succeed, instead of merely raising objections to it. 

This Covenant of the League of Nations was the 
first part of the Treaty with Germany. By other pro- 
visions Alsace-Lorraine was restored to France, a small 
district to Belgium, and to Poland a small portion of 
Silesia and the greater part of Posen and West Prussia. 
Germany was to renounce her agreements with Belgium 
and Luxemburg; she was to yield to France the coal mines 
of the Saar Basin, on the French frontier, in compen- 
sation for the wanton and terrible destruction of the 
French coal mines about Lens, this district to be admin- 
istered by the League of Nations for fifteen years, the 
people of the district to determine after that time whether 
it should continue under the League, or be returned to 
Germany, or united with France. Germany lost thus more 
than 35,000 square miles, a sixth of her former area, and 
about 7,000,000 of her population. Whereas in 1914 she 
had an area of 207,000 square miles and a population of 
68,000,000, by the Treaty of Versailles she was reduced 
to about 170,000 square miles and about 60,000,000 of 
people. Furthermore, East Prussia was now left separated 
from the remainder of Germany by a ''corridor" of Po- 
lish territory extending to the Baltic Sea, while Danzig 
was made a free city under the guarantee of the League 
of Nations. These losses, perhaps, were not in them- 
selves so severe as was the taking of so much of Germany's 
resources in coal and iron-ore and other materials, which 
lay in the territories ceded. In the districts surrendered 
to Poland and to France were a considerable part of the 
resources upon which Germany's industrial greatness had 
been founded and also her military strength. It was 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 515 



possible thus that preeminence in Europe had passed in- 
definitely from her. 

Germany was required to abrogate the Treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk, which she had forced on Russia; she was to recog- 
nize the independence of Austria, of Czecho-Slovakia, 
and of Poland, the new states now being established; 
leave the fate of the Danish country once taken from 
Denmark to be decided by the people themselves, and 
destroy the fortifications of the fortress of Helgoland. 
Outside of Europe she was to renounce all her possessions : 
her colonies, her rights in China, Siam, Liberia, and 
Morocco; cede her rights in Shantung to Japan, and 
recognize the British protectorate over Egypt. She was 
to abolish conscription, and limit her army to 100,000 men, 
her navy to a few small ships, with no submarines, her 
warships being surrendered to the Allies, and she was to 
have no airplanes for purposes of war. She was also for- 
bidden to keep any fortresses within a zone of territory 
extending from her frontier to fifty kilometers, east of the 
Rhine. 

The Treaty declared that the war had been forced upon 
the Allies by German aggression. To repair the damage 
and losses caused to them Germany was to pay an 
indemnity of which the amount was to be fixed later on, 
in accordance with Germany's ability to pay; but 
$5,000,000,000 was to be paid by May 1, 1921, twice that 
amount in the five years following, and $10,000,000,000 
still later. Subsequently attempt was made to fix the 
total at $30,000,000,000, and on another occasion at 
$55,000,000,000. Germany was to replace ton for ton the 
merchant ships destroyed in the war, and she was to 
undertake the restoration of the areas devastated by her 
armies of invasion. The Kiel Canal and certain rivers 
of Germany were to be opened to free navigation. 

This Treaty, which according to some was the most 
terrible doom ever imposed upon any nation since the 



Destruction 
of German 
military 
power 



The indem- 
nity 



516 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Character 
of the 
Treaty 



Treaty of St. 
Germain 
with Austria, 
1919 



time when Rome conquered Carthage, was viewed with 
dismay by others as not sufficiently binding Germany 
as to make impossible another aggression, and by no 
means commensurate with the evil and suffering she 
had caused. There was no doubt that the provisions of 
the settlement reduced Germany to poverty and weakness. 
It took from the generation of Germans who accepted it 
the very hope of prosperity and greatness such as they had 
known before 1914. But there was also no doubt that 
the people of England, Italy, and France, despite all 
indemnities that Germany could pay, would for gene- 
rations remain crushed under burdens of taxation such as 
they had never known before, made necessary by ex- 
penditures caused by the war. Severe as the terms were 
they were far less terrible than the Germans had, in their 
moments of triumph, boastfully proclaimed that they 
would impose. The indemnity required was not plun- 
der, but merely compensation for the ruin that Germans 
had wrought; and the reparation thus made would be 
very incomplete. The terms of disarmament imposed 
made the beginning, it was to be hoped, of general re- 
duction of armaments, which the people of the democratic 
countries had long much desired. The populations sur- 
rendered were largely Polish or Danish and partly French, 
and the territories now to be given up had all previously 
been taken away from Poland or Denmark or France. 
The results of the war being what they were, and the evil 
conditions which had come from the war being so great 
as they were, the peace was probably as good a one as 
in the circumstances was to be made. All in all, it had 
not been formulated in a spirit of hatred or revenge, nor 
with desire to destroy the German people. 

With the allies of Germany separate treaties were made. 
As a result of the war Austria-Hungary had fallen to 
pieces. From the ruins had arisen Czecho-Slovakia, and 
the state of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, whose in- 




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THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 517 



dependence the Allies had acknowledged. Accordingly, The Dual 
the Dual Monarchy had ceased to exist. With Austria Monarchy 
and with Hungary arrangements were made which stipu- fragments 
lated that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk should be re- 
nounced and also rights in Egypt, Morocco, Siam, and 
China; the navy should be surrendered, and an indemnity 
paid. No state suffered more fearful fate than Austria- 
Hungary. Austria, once the leading state in Europe, and 
long the principal member of the Dual Monarchy, which 
in 1914 had a population of 51,000,000 and an area of 
260,000 square miles, was now reduced to the petty inland 
state of German Austria, with 40,000 square miles and a 
population of 9,000,000. The splendid old capital, Vienna, 
left with too little territory to support its greatness, soon 
became a sad, shunned, famine-stricken place, while the 
Austrian people, because of the destruction and rav- 
ages of the war, and because their former economic con- 
nections had been severed, were soon in such terrible 
straits that they had no recourse but to beseech the 
charity of the world. By a later treaty Hungary likewise Hungary 
was bereft of much of her territory and all of the non- 
Magyar populations so long held in subjection. She also 
was left a minor inland state, of 35,000 square miles, con- 
taining 8,000,000 people; and she was soon overrun and 
plundered by Rumanian armies, which now took terrible 
vengeance for the awful miseries put upon their people two 
years before. With Bulgaria a treaty was made which Bulgaria 
imposed upon her an indemnity, and took from her the 
territories she had seized from Servia, Rumania, and 
Greece, during the war, while the disposition of the 
territory giving her access to the JEgean was to be decided 
by plebiscite of the local population. Bulgaria was left, 
therefore, the least important of the Balkan States, in the 
midst of rivals who had grown great by the war. By the 
Treaty of Sevres (1920), agreed upon after much difficulty Turkey 
and delay, Turkey was stripped of most of her possessions. 



518 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Ratification 
of the Treaty 
of Versailles, 
1919-20 



The United 
States fails 
to ratify 



Nominally Constantinople was left to the sultan, but the 
straits were internationalized, the European territory of 
the Porte was given mostly to Greece, and the Ottoman 
dominions in Asia were largely divided among Great 
Britain, France, Italy, and Greece. 

The more important part of the work done in Paris was 
the treaty with Germany embodying the Covenant of the 
League of Nations. It was signed at Versailles, June 28. 
A few days later it was ratified by the German Republic. 
At the end of July it was ratified by Great Britain and by 
Poland, in the following month by Belgium, and in October 
by the British dominions, by Italy, and by France, and at 
the end of December by Japan. Meanwhile, the sur- 
rendered German fleet, which had been interned at Scapa 
Flow, in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, having 
been sunk by the German crews, the Supreme Council 
issued a protocol containing provisions for making good 
the loss by surrender of additional German shipping. 
Considerable negotiation and some delay followed, but 
January 10, 1920, the protocol having been accepted by 
the German Government, ratifications were exchanged at 
Versailles and the Treaty put into effect. On this day, 
then, formally, the Great War came to an end. 

In the ratification the United States took no part. She 
had exerted enormous, if not decisive, power in the later 
stages of the war, and during the negotiations in Paris 
her president had taken a prominent part. It was due 
particularly to his efforts that a League of Nations had 
been formed and the Covenant embodied in the Treaty. 
But he had been unable to secure its ratification by his 
country. The Constitution of the United States provided 
that the assent of two thirds of the Senate was necessary 
for the acceptance of any treaty, and this it had been im- 
possible to obtain. All sorts of objections were raised. 
The extreme idealists and reformers believed that a harsh 
and evil treaty had been made, and that this was sane- 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 519 



tioned by the Covenant. There was a large number of 
Americans who were still unwilling to have their country 
enter into close relations with other powers, and wished 
to continue the old isolation. It was probable that most 
of the people of the United States earnestly desired that 
some sort of league be made for the purpose of preventing 
wars in the future. But a considerable number of senators 
refused to accept the Covenant without amendments which 
the president was unwilling to have made, so the Cove- 
nant was not accepted and the treaty with Germany not 
sanctioned. 

The war and the settlement in Paris made immense 
changes in European relations and altered the map of the 
world more than it had ever been changed at one time 
before. In Europe itself France became again, what she 
had once been for so long, the first of the Continental 
powers. A great number of her best men had been killed 
and her resources so drained that she was now left 
thoroughly exliausted, but she had acquired such re- 
sources and such position that if she recovered at all she 
would most probably have a splendid future before her, 
and her colonial empire remained intact. Italy had at last 
got the "unredeemed lands," the head of the Adriatic at 
Trieste and also the outlet of the Adriatic by estabhshing 
a protectorate over Albania. For the time, at least, this 
sea was entirely under Italy's domination. Across on the 
other side was the new Jugo-Slavic state. The age-long 
enemy, Austria, had been removed from all rivalry in the 
future. Belgium, slightly enlarged, and enormously en- 
hanced in prestige, at once began to recover from the 
disasters which had fallen upon her. 

In central Europe the changes were greater. The 
German Empire had fallen with the final disasters to its 
armies in eastern France, just as fifty years before the 
Second French Empire had been overthrown when the 
news of Sedan came to Paris. Just before the Germans 



Traditional 

Americaxi 

aloofness 



The new 
era: France 



Italy 



Belgium 



The end of 
the German 
Empire, 
1918 



520 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Flight of 
the Kaiser 



Position of 
the German 
Republic 



surrendered there were outbreaks in many places; the 
kaiser and some of the lesser rulers fled from the country, 
socialist republics were hastily set up, and in Berlin and 
especially in Munich there were communist disorders much 
like those of Paris in 1871. For a moment it seemed that 
Germany was about to split into pieces and sink into the 
chaos of ruin and disorder into which Russia had just 
gone before her. But, temporarily at least, the strong and 
solid qualities of the German people reasserted themselves ; 
the disorders were suppressed; the separatist movements 
checked; and in place of the German Empire there pres- 
ently appeared a federation of republics much like the 
United States of America, except that constitution and 
organization were socialized, less, indeed, than in Russia, 
but more thoroughly than anywhere else in the world. 
In the midst of national disorganization and disaster, 
liable for an indemnity of vast and indefinite amount, this 
government maintained itself with increasing difficulty. 
It probably had the support of most of the German people 
for the time, but in any event, such were the general 
conditions existing, it would probably be harder to uphold 
this, new government than it had been to perpetuate that 
over which Thiers had presided in France, This Ger- 
man government, under President Ebert, was constantly 
threatened on the one side by reactionaries and Junkers, 
who hoped to see the older forms soon restored, and on the 
other by radicals and "Spartacides," as the extreme 
communists were called, who wanted a complete revolution 
more like the one in Russia. It would be some years 
before the outcome could be accurately foretold. 

The German state was vastly reduced in power and 
reputation; its old industrial prosperity was gone, its 
commerce had vanished, its colonies were completely lost. 
Most of its European territory it still retained, but its im- 
mensely important districts on the upper Rhine and in 
Posen were gone, and with them great stores of iron-ore 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 521 



and coal. If the parts of the Republic remained together 
through the lean and hard years to come, there was hope 
that Germany later on might recover and grow great 
once more, and, next to France, be the greatest Conti- 
nental power, or in the end even recover her primacy once 
more. All this lay hid in the future. 

For the old Dual Monarchy there was no hope of a better 
day. In what had been the realm of Austria-Hungary the 
servants of other days had become masters, and set up for 
themselves. In the north was Czecho-Slovakia, with its 
capital at Prague, apparently with a great industrial 
future before it. To the east a new Poland had appeared, 
which might later be one of the strong European states if 
only it could live now through the period of death-like 
weakness in which war and famine had left it. To the 
south, on the western side, was the new state of the once- 
despised South Slavs, with Italy holding the Adriatic; 
while to the south on the eastern side was the greater 
Rumania, which statesmen had so often dreamed of, 
doubled in size by having taken Transylvania from the 
Magyars. In the midst of these newcomers were Hun- 
gary, poor and surrounded, without access to the sea, and 
with uncertain future, and Austria, poorer and weaker, 
and similarly cut off, having, perhaps, as her greatest 
hope, future incorporation with Germany. The old Dual 
Monarchy, whatever its faults, had held these peoples 
together. Now economic ties were severed and barriers 
erected, so that hunger and misery were added to the 
desolation of the war. Here the principal task of states- 
men would be to bring the various districts into economic 
association once more. 

The greatest changes of all had taken place in eastern 
Europe. Not only had Russia broken to pieces, but the 
lands, first ravaged by war, had in the end gone down in a 
revolution so fundamental and sweeping that its outcome 
for the present could not be predicted. It was to be 



Austria and 
Hungary 



Changes in 
eastern 
Europe: 
Russia 



522 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Revolution 
in Russia 



The Slavs 



Africa and 
Asia 



hoped that the excesses and terror of the time of change 
would prove to be the things least striking in the end, and 
that finally it would be seen that the principal result of 
the Russian Revolution was the breaking of an obsolete 
and oppressive autocracy and a great betterment of the 
condition of the Russian people. But however that might 
be in the end, Russia had, for the time, ceased to be one of 
the Great Powers of the world. All the outlying parts 
had dropped off, Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Poland, 
Bessarabia, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, and a great part of 
Siberia. It might be that all of these countries would 
later on be brought together in a strong federation, though 
it was more probable that the Russian Empire of the days 
before the Great War was not to appear again ; but after 
the evil days of dissolution and weakness the Russians 
would almost certainly take their place among the principal 
nations once more. 

None the less, the standing of the Slavic peoples in 
Europe had been for the time improved. If on the one 
hand the Russian Empire had broken to pieces, yet the 
fragments had set up autonomous governments, and on 
the other hand the Slavs of central Europe, so long 
held down by German masters, had got their freedom. 
Whether Poland, lying between bolshevist Russia and a 
vengeful Germany, could maintain herself, even with the 
assistance of France, remained to be seen. The fate of 
Czecho-Slovakia also lay hidden in the future. The new 
state of the South Slavs would certainly encounter most 
difficult problems in holding together such elements as 
the Serbs, the Croats, and the Slovenes. Yet Poland, 
Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, and also Rumania were now 
established as considerable states, and the prospects of 
the West and the South Slavs were brighter than they had 
been for five hundred years. 

Africa had fallen practically into the hands of Britain 
and France. In Asia all the northern part still belonged 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 



523 



to Russia, but the far more important southern part, 
all of it from Arabia to Malaysia, was now under the 
control of Great Britain, In the east almost all the 
important strategic positions and approaches to China, 
from Sakhalin down to Formosa, had come into the hands 
of Japan. 

The results of the large forces at work in the modern 
world and also now the results of the Great War had been 
the formation of vast empires, much as huge industrial 
combinations had appeared in the business world. For 
a chance to be one of the greater empires Germany had 
struck in 1914, and her defeat in 1918 had for the present 
definitely taken from her the possibility of obtaining it. 
Russia, if she recovered, might be one of the greatest, 
as might Japan if she continued her remarkable expansion 
and success, and succeeded in her aggressions on the main- 
land. But the two powers now indubitably holding 
first place were the British Empire and the United States. 
In her large population, intelligent and prosperous, in her 
mfinite wealth, her immense resources, the United States 
held unrivalled position. But more imposing, though in- 
trinsically less strong, was the position of the British 
Empire, which controlled most of Africa, and a great part 
of Asia. Its colonies, its naval stations, its strategic posi- 
tions were everywhere. Britain was mistress of the seas, 
and held the approaches to the best routes, the entrance to 
the Mediterranean, all the environs of Suez, and virtually 
now the control of Constantinople. Together the British 
Empire and the United States held assured control of the 
seas, and had in their keeping so great a part of all the 
world's wealth and resources, so large a part of all of the 
earth's coal and iron, tin and copper and gold, so much of 
its meat and wheat and corn, that for the present to a 
great extent the destiny of the world lay in their keeping. 
Fortunate it might seem that such unparalleled greatness 
and wealth had come to the peoples which, notwithstand- 



The domi- 
nant powers 



Greatness 
of the 
British 
Empire 



524 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Solidarity 
of the Eng- 
lish-speak- 
ing peoples 



Crushing 
debt 



ing many errors, had most cherished democracy, human- 
ity, and free development. The best of the EngHsh- 
speaking peoples might well be humble in contemplation 
of the mighty prospect ahead. 

For the British Empire and the United States one of the 
greatest tasks of the future was maintenance of friendship 
and cordial relations with each other. Neither of them, 
probably, could be overthrown except by the other. 
Together their safety was assured, and also their future 
position. Their people spoke the same tongue and dealt 
much with each other; hence there would often be rivalry, 
some ill-feeling, minor conflict, and many disputes. But 
the people of the United Kingdom, of the United States, 
and of the commonwealths of the British Empire had a 
common inheritance of speech, law, governmental system, 
character, general outlook. And for some time an in- 
creasing number of the English-speaking people had come 
to believe that war between the British Empire and the 
United States was inconceivable and outside calculation. 

But however bright the future of the most fortunate 
might seem, the outlook of most of the European nations, 
and even their present, was dark indeed. Seldom had 
there been so much desolation and waste, so much misery 
and woe. The total cost of the war, variously estimated, 
had been, perhaps, at least $200,000,000,000, and perhaps 
$300,000,000,000, of which nearly two thirds had been 
incurred by the Allies. Such vast expenditures in four 
years' time could in no wise be met out of income, and the 
funds had been raised only in small part through taxation. 
Great Britain and afterward the United States had pro- 
cured through taxes the largest sums ever so obtained in 
the history of the world; but France, and Italy, Austria- 
Hungary, and especially the German Empire had issued 
repeated loans, hoping to make the defeated enemy pay 
sufiicient indemnity to cover them later on. Had the con- 
flict been short, it is possible that the victor might have 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 5^5 



been able to do this; but when the long struggle was over 
it was evident that the ruined Central Powers had not 
remaining sufficient substance to make good the damage 
they had wrought and then reimburse to the victors the 
expenditure entailed by the war. Hence the present 
generation found itself burdened with a terrible, crushing 
mortgage which might be repudiated, which might be 
paid off after many years of economy and toil, which 
might remain as a veritable millstone about the necks of 
weaker peoples indefinitely on in the future. In 1914 the 
national debt of France was about $6,000,000,000; after 
the war it was about $33,000,000,000, or more than half 
of her national wealth. The debt of Great Britain 
had risen from more than $3,000,000,000 to about 
$40,000,000,000. The financial position of Germany and 
of Austria was so utterly desperate that their future 
salvation could be hoped for rather than understood and 
explained. Hard work, meager living, crushing taxes 
alone could get rid of these debts. The destruction 
caused by the war had brought more economic confu- 
sion and more widespread distress than the world had 
ever known before. Everywhere prices were high and 
supplies and materials scarce. Accordingly, the despair 
and unrest, which unhappily had always prevailed among 
those least fortunate and stable, were immensely increased. 
There were many demands for complete and immediate 
reform. Everywhere appeared those who proposed revo- 
lutionary schemes. Hence radicals looked forward to 
speedy dissolution of the existing social and economic 
organization; many others feared that dangerous changes 
were at hand; and the conservatives became more con- 
servative until a great tide of reaction set in. 

More terrible than the waste and the heritage of debt 
was the loss of life and happiness and health that the 
war had entailed. The number of men killed was esti- 
mated at 9,000,000, and the total casualties of the struggle 



Financial 
confusion 
and ruin 



Grave 

problems 

resultant 



Heritage 
of woe 



526 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Loss of life 



The old sys- 
tem and the 
hope for 
things better 



The tragedy 
of the 
present 



at 33,000,000. Horrible were the losses of Germany 
and Russia, and the very flower of the young manhood of 
France was gone. For a generation it would be a ques- 
tion whether France or Servia or Poland could ever re- 
cover, and during all this time from the highlands of 
Scotland to the great plain of Russia travellers would see 
mutilated or weakened men dragging out the course of 
their lives. Millions of children were orphans, millions of 
women widows. To other millions of women in England 
and Germany and France it would seem that a curse was 
upon the earth in the time that they lived, for many could 
never expect to marry or hope to become mothers of 
children. 

The direct cause of this War of Desolation had been 
the actions of military leaders who guided Russia, Austria- 
Hungary, and the German Empire. Much condemnation 
and wrath had fallen upon the German people; and, as 
matters were, this was well. But in larger sense, the war 
came from the system of things that existed in Europe. 
And as the passions of war time subsided it was evident 
that in Germany and in Austria-Hungary, as in Russia 
and France and Great Britain, a host of plain and simple 
men had been torn from their homes to be devoured in 
the death- jaws of battle. From all these countries, and 
especially from Great Britain, Germany, and France, a 
goodly company of gentlemen, who held in their lives and 
their keeping the best of the present of Europe and the 
best of her hopes for the future, had gone forth and given 
themselves. Now they lay in the silence of unnum- 
bered graves. War had taken the best. To an ancient 
master of tragic tale it might have seemed that the air 
was alive with innumerable spirits of slaughtered men, 
hovering over the trenches and fortress towns, writhing 
ghostly hands in an agony of woe and uttering mute im- 
precations upon the evil thing that had touched them. 
This system had developed not from the wickedness of 



THE SETTLEMENT OF 1920 527 

particular men, but during a long time, from numerous and The task of 
complex causes. It was to be the principal task now of all ^^ future 
the best people to displace it gradually with something 
that was better. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The cost of the war: E, L. Bogart, Direct and Indirect Costs 
of the Great War (1919) ; A. Demangeon, Le Declin de VEurope 
(1920) ; Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Ahendlandes (1917). 

The effects in Germany and Austria-Hungary: Graf Julius 
Andrassy, Diplomatie und Weltkrieg (1920); Ferdinand Runkel, 
Die Deutsche Revolution (1919). 

National aspirations: Rene Johannet, Le Principe des Na- 
tionalites (1919), critical of; R. W. Seton- Watson, Europe in the 
Melting-Pot (1919); Ralph Butler, The New Eastern Europe 
(1919), concerning Finland, Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. 

Improvements desired in the new era hoped for: Towards a 
Lasting Settlement (1916), essays by several liberal and radical 
authors, edited by C. R. Buxton; W. H. Dawson, Problems of 
the Peace (1918) ; Rev. Walter MacDonald, Some Ethical Ques- 
tions of Peace and War, with Special Reference to Ireland (1919) ; 
Arthur Ponsonby, Democracy and Diplomacy: a Plea for Popular 
Control of Foreign Policy (1915); Richard Roberts, The Un- 
finished Programme of Democracy (1919). 

The Congress of Paris : Dr. E. J. Dillon, The Peace Conference 
(1919), critical of and not very satisfactory; C. H. Haskins and 
R. H. Lord, Some Problems of the Peace Conference (1920); 
Robert Lansing, The Peace N egotiations: A Personal Narrative 
(1921) ; A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, ed. by H. W. 
V. Temperley, 2 vols. (1920); Andre Tardieu, The Truth About 
the Treaty (1921); C. T. Thompson, The Peace Conference Day 
by Day (1920), What Really Happened in Paris: the Story of the 
Peace Conference, 1919, ed. by E. M. House and Charles 
Seymour (1921). 

A league of nations: Viscount Bryce, Essays and Addresses 
in War Time (1918); Sir Geoffrey Butler, A Handbook to the 
League of Nations (1919); G. L. Dickinson, The European 
Anarchy (1916); Viscount Grey and others. The League of Na- 
tions (1919); The Nations and the League (1919), by ten repre- 
sentative writers of seven nations; Lord Eustace Percy, The 
Responsibilities of the League (1919); Sir Frederick Pollock, 



528 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

The League of Nations (1919), with an excellent historical in- 
troduction; Charles Sarolea, Europe and the League of Nations 
(1919); J. C. Smuts, The League of Nations (1919); Elizabeth 
York, Leagues of Nations, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (1919). 
The Treaty of Versailles: Bernard M. Baruch, The Making of 
the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty (1920); J. L. 
Garvin, The Economic Foundations of Peace (1919); Gabriel 
Hanotaux, Le TraitS de Versailles de 28 Juin, 1919 (1919); J. 
M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), 
a brilliant but specious attack on the economic conditions of the 
Treaty by an important British representative at Paris. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM, AND THE 
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 



. . . in the most advanced countries the following wUl be pretty 
generally applicable: 1. Abolition of property in land and ap- 
plication of all rents of land to public purposes. ... 3. Aboli- 
tion of all right of inheritance. . . .6. Centralisation of the 
means of communication and transport in the hands of the State 
. . . 8. Equal liability of all to labour. . . . 
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Com- 
munist Party (1848). 

Je suis un partisan convaincu de Vegalite economique et sociale . 

je pense que I'egalite doit s'etablir dans le monde par I'organisation 
spontanee du travail et de la propriete collective des associations 
productrices librement organisees et federalisees dans les com- 
munes, et par la federation tout aussi spontanee des communes, 
mais non par Taction supreme et tutelaire de I'Etat. 
Mikhail Bakunin, Preambule pour la Seconde lAvraison de 
L'Emjrire Knouto-Germanique (1871). 

We are about to ask how it is possible to conceive the transformation 
of the men of to-day into the free producers of to-morrow working 
in manufactories where there are no masters. . . violence en- 
lightened by the idea of the general strike .... 
Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (trans. 1914.) 

Russia is declared to be a Republic of Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers' 
and Peasants' Deputies. All the power in the centre and in the 
provinces belongs to these Soviets. 

. . . private ownership of land is abolished, and the whole land 
fund is declared common national property and transferred to the 
laborers without compensation. Inheritance, whether by law or by 
will, is abolished. 

Decrees of the Soviet Government of Russia, 1917. 

After the middle of the nineteenth century the prog- 
ress of socialism in Europe was increasingly rapid. It 
was spread abroad by the powerful writings of Karl Marx, 

529 



F*rogress 
of socialism 
in Europe 



530 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Other social 

doctrines: 

anarchism 



Mikhail 
Bakunin 



by the teachings of his associate Engels, and by the labors 
of disciples, notable among whom was the brilliant Ferdi- 
nand Lassalle in Germany. In 1871 it received a setback 
in the overthrow of the Commune of Paris, which Marx had 
hoped would succeed. Moreover, the socialists, in the 
presence of their own vast doctrines, began to split up into 
different creeds, and by the beginning of the twentieth 
century it was often difficult for outsiders and even for 
adherents to determine just what socialism meant. None 
the less, meanwhile it continued to go forward, especially 
in Germany and in France. 

In the course of this time other social doctrines had been 
preached, of which the more important made much prog- 
ress. Some of them developed alongside of socialism or 
even in opposition to it; others were the outgrowth or 
extension of socialism itself. About the time when 
Marx began doing his work a Frenchman, Pierre-Joseph 
Proudhon, revived and extended the teachings of prede- 
cessors in France, that government interfered with the 
liberties and thwarted the happiness of most of the 
people, and that property was got by plundering the mass 
of the people. His most famous work, Qu'est-ce que la 
Propriete? (What is Property.'*), pubhshed in 1840, de- 
clared that property was theft. He believed that man's 
happiness could best be obtained under anarchism, 
absence of government and governmental interference. 
Like many others who have taught extreme and subver- 
sive doctrines, Proudhon was a theorist, kindly and hu- 
mane; but his doctrines were taken up by bolder and more 
violent persons, who undertook to accomplish great re- 
forms by getting rid of existing governments, and who 
strove to destroy governments by murdering their princi- 
pal officials. Under Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian, and his 
followers, anarchism spread horror and dread throughout 
Europe. In the course of a single generation a tsar of 
Russia, an empress of Austria, a king of Italy, a president 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 531 



of France, a premier of Spain, and even a president of the 
United States, fell victims to anarchist assassins. 

Marx was almost from the first bitterly opposed to the 
teachings of Proudhon ; and socialism and anarchism have 
continued to be widely separate, embodying very different 
theories of organization. The anarchists would destroy 
all authority above, so as to establish complete and ex- 
treme individual freedom. The ideal of the sociahsts was 
that the State, reorganized, should control all collectively 
or for the common welfare of all the people. Upon the 
great body of men anarchism never had more effect than 
to excite wondering curiosity or terror; and it never did 
much to affect socialist theories or methods. 

But socialism was affected by a radical movement 
from within. In the course of the half century that passed 
after the time when Louis Blanc and Karl Marx began 
teaching, socialism gained in greatness and importance, 
and many of the more moderate reforms advocated by its 
adherents were slowly obtained. Great and obvious evils 
remained, however, some of which were not remedied be- 
cause it was not known how to amend them. During this 
period many of the more moderate and practical socialists 
abandoned their extremer theories and took part in the 
politics of the states where they lived, hoping thus to 
better conditions by sustained and constructive effort. 
But it was obvious that after two generations many of the 
things foretold by socialist leaders had not come to pass, 
and shght prospect was seen of bringing them about as 
things for the most part were then going. Accordingly, as 
is ever the case, the bolder, the rasher, the more fiery and 
impatient, proclaimed that existing methods never could 
effect fundamental betterment, and that the important 
changes which socialists desired must be obtained by very 
different devices. 

In France, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
appeared leaders who proclaimed that the great goal of 



Anarchism 
and social- 
ism 



Discontent 
with the 
progress 
of socialism 



Syndicalism 



532 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



"Direct 
action" by 
trade unions 



Objects of 
syndicalism 



Unceasing 

industrial 

warfare 



socialism was to be reached not through slow, patient work 
and persuasion but through violence and force; not 
through efforts in legislatures, which were the creations 
of the middle classes, who always controlled them, but 
through direct action of the workers themselves. As 
parliaments had been devised by the middle class, so had 
the working people created an institution peculiarly their 
own, the trade union, which they really controlled, and 
which was their particular means of bringing desired 
changes to pass. The new movement was soon known as 
syndicalism, from syndicat (trade union). It spread rap- 
idly into other countries, and across the ocean into Canada 
and the United States, where its adherents styled them- 
selves Industrial Workers of the World (I. W. W.). 

Syndicalists proposed to render the workingmen's 
unions more powerful by making them larger and more 
comprehensive. They would organize into one big union 
all the workers employed in a single industry, and then 
make powerful alliance of the large groups. In time of 
need workers who resisted their employers could be sup- 
ported by their brethren in gigantic strikes, or even general 
strikes, which would paralyze the transportation and 
industrial life of the nation. It was in France that these 
ideas were most strikingly carried out, though they were 
tried also in Russia and England. In the years 1906-9 
several efforts, only partly successful, were made by 
French workers to paralyze opposition by means of great 
strikes, and in 1910 an effort was made to stop all railway 
traffic. But the railway strike failed when the govern- 
ment mobilized the strikers for military service on the 
railways, thus putting them in effect under martial law; 
and on other occasions not all the workingmen joined, and 
many citizen volunteers took the place of the strikers. 
Syndicalist workmen were taught that there must be no 
real peace even in the time when no strikes were going on, 
but that capitalism must be damaged and diminished by 




36. EUE 







V 1920 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 533 



secret, continual destruction; that laborers must do less 
work than they were paid for, and that they must injure 
the product and hurt the machinery whenever they could. 
Since on one occasion, it is said, certain French workmen 
beginning a strike had thrown their wooden shoes into the 
machinery to ruin it, this destruction was known as 
sabotage. 

The extreme views and often the violence of the syndical- 
ists not only awakened great apprehension wherever they 
made themselves known, but aroused suspicion among 
some of the socialists themselves. Syndicalism really 
proposed to bring about some of the most important re- 
forms which socialists had originally taught; but syndi- 
calist methods and the results they strove for were very 
different from what many of the socialists now sup- 
ported. In the early years of the twentieth century the 
syndicalist leaders in Liverpool, in Dublin, in Paris, in 
Barcelona, and elsewhere, hoped to bring about the sup- 
pression of capitalism and the taking over by workmen of 
property and the means of production, so that the railways, 
factories, and mines should be owned and managed by the 
laborers for their own profit and advantage. Some of them 
hoped for a new organization of the State, which should 
be but a group of industries or unions of workers, controlled 
completely by the laborers within them. All this, if 
necessary, should be done by revolution and force. 

In Germany socialism had been carried forward by 
Ferdinand Lassalle, disciple of Marx and son of a wealthy 
Jewish merchant. Lacking the profound mind and intel- 
lectual reach of his master, he nevertheless possessed such 
brilliancy and charm that he made friends of officials like 
Bismarck and attracted a large following among the work- 
men of his country. In 1863 he founded the General 
Workingmen's Association. Before much came of it he 
was killed in a duel, but in 1869 the Social Democratic 
Party was founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August 



Socialism 
and syndi- 
calism 



Socialism in 
the German 
Empire 



534 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



In Austria- 
Hungary 



In France 



Bebel. Socialists were regarded with suspicion and dis- 
like by the government of the new German Empire, stern 
laws were passed against them, and presently some of the 
things they demanded were done by the State itself with 
the hope of lessening their influence and weakening their 
power. Nevertheless, their numbers grew rapidly until at 
last they had the largest following of any party in the 
country, though many who were not socialists, but merely 
liberals and moderates, voted with them. Shortly after 
the Social Democratic Party was founded it received more 
than 100,000 votes; in 1912 it had more than 4,000,000. 
The party was ably led by Bebel, who displayed great skill 
in the Reichstag, and became one of the striking orators of 
his age. For a long time it could do no more than be a 
party of opposition and protest; but after the fall of the 
German Empire at the end of the Great War a German 
republic was established, partly upon a socialist plan. 
In Austria-Hungary also socialism made some progress; 
but not till the beginning of the twentieth century did a 
socialist political party attain any importance there. This 
was partly because Austria and Hungary, with respect to 
industrial development, lagged behind their neighbors to 
the north and the west, and partly because in no other 
great state was the population less homogeneous, more 
divided by race and religion. 

In France also socialism had made rapid growth, though 
with more violent upheavals, wliich were followed by 
reaction and repression, so that development was re- 
tarded for a while. A socialist movement in 1848 had led 
to a fierce uprising in Paris, which was quelled after 
terrible fighting. The capture of Paris by the Germans in 
1871 was almost immediately followed by the establish- 
ment there of a commune, which, had it been maintained, 
would have been a socialist community only loosely con- 
nected with the rest of France. But against it the con- 
servative people and the peasants of the rural districts rose, 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 535 



and Paris was again captured after a siege more terrible 
than that endured at the hands of the Germans. There 
was much destruction of property and hfe, followed by 
great and merciless vengeance. For a time the socialists 
were completely crushed, and socialism was entirely dis- 
credited in the eyes of most of the people of France. But 
after a while communists who had been sent into exile were 
allowed to return, and gradually socialism gained strength 
again. For some time French socialists were divided into 
parties, especially under Jules Guesde, who in Germany 
had studied the Social Democratic organization, and who 
was a follower of Marx, and under Jean Jaures, the great- 
est and most accomplished orator of his time, who ad- 
vocated gradually socializing the means of production. 
In 1904 the different factions were united, and ten years 
later the French Socialist Party received 1,500,000 votes. 
In France socialism was supplemented and extended by 
the syndicalist doctrines, which spread outward to neigh- 
boring countries, especially to Spain, to Italy, to Great 
Britain, and to Ireland. In Belgium, Italy, and in Spain 
socialist and syndicalist doctrines had considerable effect 
and got much attention. 

In Great Britain, where the Industrial Revolution had 
begun and attained greatest growth, where Robert Owen 
and his associates had taught some of the first of the 
socialist doctrines, and where Marx had spent the best of 
the years of his life, socialism developed more slowly than 
in Germany or France. This was due very largely to the 
temperament of the British people, long accustomed to 
slow change and improvement, and always distrustful of 
the usefulness of theories and general ideas. For more 
than a generation in the British Isles socialism made 
scarcely any progress. In 1880 William Morris, the poet, 
and H. M. Hyndman, followers of the teachings of Marx, 
organized the Social Democratic Federation, which drew 
no large following, however. Three years later the Fabian 



Overthrow 
of the Com- 
mune, 1872 



In Great 
Britain 



536 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Fabian 
Society- 



Growth of 
British 
socialism 
after 1918 



Society was founded by a group of intellectual leaders, 
including the well-known writers on economic history, 
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the Anglo-Irish dramatist, 
G. B. Shaw, and the prolific minor novelist, H. G. Wells. 
They proposed to follow the "Fabian" policy of gradually 
getting political parties to accept and carry through social 
reforms. Presently socialism began to affect the labor 
organizations, and in 1893 a trade-union leader organized 
the Independent Labor Party, whose members hoped that 
socialism might be brought to prevail in their country. 
By 1914 British socialists, increasingly numerous and 
active, were advocating as a matter of course the abolition 
of capitalism and wages, the taking over by the State of the 
great industries, like mining and transportation, and the 
control of the lesser ones by the workers themselves. 
During the time of the Great War, confronted with the 
immense danger that threatened the destruction of 
Great Britain and the British Empire, these doctrines, 
though much talked of and written about, were by most 
of the workingmen of Britain thrust away into the back- 
ground. But after the victory, when the enemy was 
powerless, in the midst of the want and discontent which 
followed the destructive conflict, socialism and syndicalism 
seemed to take possession of a greater part of the popu- 
lation than ever before. Accordingly, some observers de- 
clared that the Labor Party would in the future get con- 
trol of the government and attempt to reform the State by 
the application of socialistic ideas. And there were not 
wanting those who affirmed that what was called bolshe- 
vism had much more chance of being established in Great 
Britain, where the majority of the inhabitants were an 
industrial proletariat, than in a country like Russia, where 
almost all the people were peasants, uneducated and 
not progressive. It was very probable, however, that 
here as elsewhere, what seemed like powerful tendency 
toward sweeping social changes was to a considerable 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 537 



extent merely the unrest and the ferment following in- 
evitably in the wake of the war. 

In Russia, likewise, socialist doctrines had been taught, 
but for a long time they had seemed to be of slight impor- 
tance there, since in Russia there was little industrialism. 
Even after the Russian industrial revolution had done its 
work, the overwhelming body of the people continued to 
be agricultural workers, isolated, uneducated, conserva- 
tive, and moved only by desire to obtain a larger share of 
the agricultural lands. Nevertheless, it was in Russia 
that the most complete and thorough-going experiment in 
socialism was tried. During the misery and confusion 
which overwhelmed that country in the latter part of the 
Great War, the old system completely collapsed. In 1917, 
after a revolution had overthrown the old government, 
certain socialists, whose leaders were Lenine and Trotzky, 
forming a group called the Bolsheviki, seized power and 
maintained themselves. They then decreed some of the 
sweeping changes which Marx had long before hoped 
would come to pass. Private property and inheritance 
were abolished; land, capital, transportation were national- 
ized; and it was decreed that all people should work. By 
this time all over the world radical leaders were loudly pro- 
claiming that socialism was the hope of the future, and 
that bolshevism was destined shortly to overthrow what 
they called the outworn systems. For the moment it 
appeared to many that the Russian Revolution was the 
most striking event since 1793, and that bolshevism held 
untold possibilities for good or for evil in the future. But 
it is probable that this revolution in Russia was less the 
result of the advance and the power of socialism than of 
the destruction, the uncertainty, and the general unrest, 
which proceeded from the War of the Nations. 

Perhaps no great struggle ever produced such mighty 
results in so short a time as the war which began in 1914. 
The conflict lasted little more than four years, but in that 



In Russia 



Application 
of the doc- 
trines of 
Marx in 
Russia 



Unrest of 
the period 
of the war 



538 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Destruction 
resulting 
from the 
Great War 



Russia and 
the Great 
War 



Reaction- 
aries plan 
to withdraw 
from the war 



time the most powerful state in Europe, the German 
Empire, was overthrown, Austria-Hungary was broken to 
pieces beyond all hope of redemption, and the Russian 
Empire not only broke into pieces, but was the scene of a 
revolution more striking than any since that which long 
before had transformed France and Europe. The conse- 
quences and changes of the cataclysm are not to be esti- 
mated yet. But nowhere else in Europe was the old order 
so completely altered as in Russia. 

At the beginning of the Great War the Russian armies 
had much success, utterly defeating the Austrians; but 
their own losses were heavy, especially against the Ger- 
mans; and after a while, as their military material was 
exhausted, they were forced to carry on the struggle with 
prodigal and hideous sacrifice of their men. In 1915 the 
Teutonic allies defeated them completely, drove them from 
the territory which they had occupied, and conquering 
Poland and part of the Baltic Provinces, drove deep into 
Russia itself. From this disaster the Russians never 
recovered. It was now seen that a great agricultural 
state, not well organized, could sustain no long conflict 
with an industrial state well organized for war and well 
equipped. Russian war supplies were exhausted; the 
transportation system was breaking down; vast numbers 
of men had been killed or wounded; the country was filled 
with miserable refugees from provinces taken by the foe. 
It is true that a great national enthusiasm had been aroused 
at the beginning of the conflict. Russians desired to 
help their kinsmen in Servia, and there was an outburst 
against all things German, the old name of the capital, 
St. Petersburg, being changed to Petrograd, the Slavic 
equivalent. But many of the officials and reactionaries 
had no desire to continue the war, and plotted to make 
peace with Germany as soon as they could. They feared 
that a continuance of the disastrous conflict would destroy 
their old privileges and position, and not a few of them 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 539 



were of German sympathy or extraction. But the 
Hberals in the Duma steadily supported the war, beheving 
that only with its triumphant conclusion could they obtain 
the changes which they hoped for; and the local zemstvos 
did excellent work in relieving distress and providing 
material of war. In 1916 the Russians made a last great 
effort, with much success, but at enormous cost; and after 
this they could do no more. By the end of the year the 
nation was almost completely exhausted; the inefficient 
government had nearly broken down, and thought only of 
making peace in time to save itself; and the people had 
suffered almost to the limit of endurance. 

The end came with a suddenness that surprised the 
world. The poorer people in Petrograd were starving, and 
hunger now drove them to revolution, as once it had driven 
the rabble of Paris. Early in March, 1917, bread riots 
began, which increased until the whole city was filled with 
fighting and confusion, during which the troops deserted 
the government and went over to the mobs. The op- 
position in the Duma was plotting to overthrow the 
government at this very time; and the Duma was now sus- 
pended. The tsar acted with much weakness and in- 
decision and the capital was lost. The other great cities of 
the Empire joined the revolution, and a part of the Duma 
now instituted a provisional government of the country. 
The abdication of the tsar was demanded. March 15 
Nicholas II, "Emperor of all the Russias," laid down his 
power, and the dynasty of the Romanovs came to an end. 

As after events were to show this was one of the momen- 
tous events in the history of Europe. For ages autocracy 
had maintained itself in eastern Europe. For a thousand 
years at Constantinople the Byzantine emperors had ruled 
absolutely, heads of Church and State, and from their 
empire some civilization had gone up through the Balkans, 
and also into south Russia. Of this civilization the Rus- 
sians had been principal heirs, and their government and 



Beginning 
of the Rus- 
sian Revo- 
lution, 
1917 



Fall of the 
tsardom 



540 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



First stage: 
attempted 
moderate 
reforms 



Extreme 
Russian 
socialists: 
the Bol- 
shevik! 



their religion had in the course of centuries been spread 
over half of Europe. Under the Russian tsars lived a 
fourth part of all the white people in the world. While 
most of the other white people in Europe and the Ameri- 
cas had developed self-government and gone forward in 
material civilization, the Slavs had lagged far behind. 
Now, after supporting the old system for a long time or 
else passively enduring its evils, they suddenly overthrew 
it, and, as was evidenced very soon, they overthrew it 
completely. Everywhere was the Russian Revolution of 
1917 hailed as a great advancement for democracy, and 
rash expectations were cherished of the benefits im- 
mediately to follow. 

The provisional government attempted to effect liberal 
reform, set up a constitutional government after the 
model of the states of western Europe, restore order, and 
continue a vigorous prosecution of the war. This govern- 
ment was in the hands of the Constitutional Democrats led 
by Prince Lvov, and by Miliukov, assisted by Kerensky, a 
moderate socialist leader. An assembly was to be called 
to draw up a new constitution. Meanwhile, a general 
amnesty was proclaimed for political offenders, and 
freedom of speech was announced, and universal suffrage, 
for both men and women. 

But the liberal leaders were by no means able to control 
the revolution now started. The socialists and radicals 
in both city and country joined forces, and soon proved to 
be the most powerful and aggressive body in the country. 
They began to be known as the Bolsheviki. Twelve years 
before, at the time of the earlier revolution, the Social 
Democratic Party of the industrial workers had split into 
two parts, a moderate minority, the Mensheviki (Russian 
menshe, less) and the majority of radicals, led by Nicolai 
Lenine, the Bolsheviki (Russian bolshe, more). Now in 
1917 the more radical peasants of the Social Revolutionary 
Party combined with the radical socialists of the cities. 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 541 



desiring a far more complete revolution than they thought 
had yet been attained, and caring less for mere political 
change than thorough social alteration. To bring this 
about they wished to end the war at once. Their leaders 
taught that the Great War had been brought about by 
capitalists and imperialists of all the countries alike, all of 
whom had as their chief interest the exploitation of the 
masses. Everywhere the proletariat and the mass of the 
people must compel the making of peace, after which the 
people must overthrow the upper class and the selfish 
bourgeoisie and capitalists, then usher in the great reforms 
of the socialists, which would bring real freedom to the 
masses of the world. 

Such were the Bolsheviki. Their teachings were not 
new, but to many of the hungry, disheartened, suffering 
people of Russia, most of whom had no political experience 
whatever, these doctrines came as a great new message or 
else made no difference whatever. All over the world the 
dislocation caused by the war had produced a stirring and 
unrest, and a willingness of men to hearken to strange, 
revolutionary doctrines. The teachings of the Bolsheviki 
began to spread over the country, everywhere undermining 
the existing order. The Germans soon understood how 
greatly Russia would be weakened by this. So they 
helped some of the Russian extremists to return to their 
country, and assisted them as much as they could. The 
Russian soldiers holding the east front against the Ger- 
mans were told that they need not obey their officers, and 
all discipline was soon at an end. They were likewise told 
that the land was being divided up among the people, and 
they, deserting to get their share, the Russian armies 
melted away. The socialists demanded a "democratic" 
peace with "no annexations and no indemnities." Ger- 
man soldiers fraternized with the Russians, declaring that 
they also desired this, and military operations in the east 
came nearly to an end. 



Social and 
economic 
alteration 
desired 



The Ger- 
mans and 
the Bol- 
sheviki 



"No annexa- 
tions and no 
indemnities" 



542 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Second 
stage : the 
Bolsheviki 
get control 



Lenine 

and 

Trotzky 



The Bol- 
sheviki 
accept the 
Peace of 
Brest- 
Litovsk 



Meanwhile, a provisional government of liberals was 
trying to rule the country and continue the war. In 
many places, however, the radicals took affairs into their 
own hands, the people choosing Soviets, or councils of dele- 
gates of the soldiers, sailors, and workingmen. The most 
powerful and important was the soviet at Petrograd, which 
regarded itself as representing, in effect, the radicals of the 
country. In every way possible it opposed the Provisional 
Government, and was determined to get control of the 
government itself. It was not long before Miliukov and 
Prince Lvov lost power and Kerensky became the head of 
affairs; but he, who had formerly seemed a radical, was 
soon left far behind in the violent progress of the revo- 
lution. He strove valiantly to restore the armies, but 
the Germans completely routed the Russians and in 
September they captured Riga. Lenine, the bolshevik 
leader, was now in the country, as was Trotzky who had 
also taken part in the Revolution of 1905. Boldly 
and with great energy and skill they urged the work- 
men to overthrow the old system completely. More 
and more did disorder and anarchy increase as the old 
system went down in ruin, as Kerensky and other moder- 
ates lost hold, and as the Bolsheviki took their place. In 
November the garrison of Petrograd went over to them 
and Kerensky fled from the city. He strove to recover 
his power but was defeated, and fled from the country. 
Meanwhile, the Bolsheviki gained Moscow, Kiev, and 
other places, fighting fiercely, and putting down their 
enemies with iron hand. 

The Russian Revolution now entered upon another 
phase. The Bolsheviki abandoned the Allies, and began 
negotiations for a separate peace. The Germans, who had 
no more to gain by pretended friendship, threw off the 
mask, and at Brest-Litovsk, in March, 1918, compelled the 
Russian leaders to agree to a terrible peace, which undid 
the work of Russian expansion and development for the 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 543 



past two hundred years, and broke the Russian Empire 
into fragments. Finland, Poland, the Baltic Provinces, the 
Ukraine, were to be abandoned along with other territory, 
and Russia, paying a large indemnity, was to be left cut 
off almost entirely from the sea, in economic subservience 
to the German Empire. Germany now was completely 
victorious in the east. Lenine and Trotzky regarded all 
this without great concern. They had no desire for un- 
willing peoples to be held subject by Russia, and they be- 
lieved that bolshevism among the German masses would 
soon overthrow German autocracy also. They turned 
with greater interest to domestic problems, which always 
they had most at heart. 

They attempted to set up a political organization 
different from what existed in other countries. Lenine 
wished Russia to be a republic in which political power 
would be vested in Soviets or councils of workmen, soldiers, 
or peasants. The state was to be socialized, taking over 
banks, railways, industrial enterprises, and land, to 
nationalize them and make them the property of all of the 
people. A series of decrees was issued to effect these 
designs, and to abolish inheritance and private ownership 
of property. Actually, while many changes were made, 
some of them in theory at least having much merit, a great 
part of the programme soon broke down. The peasants had 
already seized most of the land and divided it, and were 
little disposed to see it taken away and made the property 
of the nation. The new order in Russia was regarded with 
much suspicion elsewhere. The bolshevists announced 
their intention of overthrowing capitalism and the bour- 
geoisie in all countries; hence the Allies were hostile. 
Disorders broke out and numerous counter-revolutionary 
movements, in the course of which there was great cruelty 
and slaughter, and much destruction of property. Appar- 
ently Russia sank lower and lower in economic demorali- 
zation and confusion, but Lenine and Trotzky, who had 



The Russian 
Empire in 
fragments 



The bolshe- 
vist system 
in Russia 



Disorder 
and de- 
struction 



544 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



Counter- 
revolution- 
ary move- 
ments 



War with 
Poland 



dispensed now with most of the Soviets, ruthlessly crushed 
all resistance. Great numbers of the upper classes and 
more intelligent people were slaughtered, and some time 
in 1918 the tsar was murdered miserably in Ekaterinburg 
far away. 

In the autumn of 1918 Germany and Austria, exhausted 
by the length of the struggle, weakened by the influence 
of bolshevism in the east, and overwhelmed by their foes 
in the west, abandoned the contest and surrendered. But 
the end of the Great War brought no peace for Russia. By 
most of the people in the rest of the world the bolshevists 
were regarded with fear and suspicion, and Russia was not 
permitted to have communication with other countries. 
In the next two years several great counter-revolutionary 
movements were organized. In Siberia Admiral Kolchak, 
in south Russia General Denikine, along the Baltic General 
Yudenitch, all prepared to march upon the center of the 
country and overthrow bolshevist rule. At one time they 
all seemed near to considerable success, but by the end of 
1919 Lenine and Trotzky were completely triumphant. 
Somewhat later the Poles, who believed that their new 
state was gravely threatened by bolshevist activities, 
suddenly invaded Russia and drove on until their armies 
captured Kiev. But the Russian people, whatever their 
attitude toward bolshevism and a socialist government 
might be, were filled with strong national feeling against 
their old enemies the Poles. They rallied to the support 
of Lenine's government, drove the invader out of Russia, 
pressed on across Polish territory and were stopped only 
at the gates of Warsaw, There they were held and 
defeated. While the tide of war was flowing and ebbing 
across this wasted country, and while Poland and Russia 
were both being reduced to the last stages of exhaustion, 
the relics of Denikine's forces, assisted by the British and 
the French, took refuge in the Crimea, and, under the 
leadership of General Wrangel, rapidly gained new strength. 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 545 



During such time as the Poles and the bolshevist armies 
were engaged in fighting each other, Wrangel's forces 
moved north from their stronghold and for a moment 
seemed to have some chance of success. But no sooner 
had the Poles and the Russians made peace than the soviet 
forces were marched to the south, the narrow neck of the 
Crimean Peninsula was forced, and before the end of 1920 
the counter-revolutionary movement had been everywhere 
utterly crushed. 

Much obscurity continued to surround these events. 
It would seem that the efforts of Kolchak and Denikine, 
which were supported by the Allied governments, were 
in Russia regarded to some extent as outside aggression; 
and that the Russian people, with national spirit aroused, 
rallied to support the government in power, even though 
many of them had as little love for Lenine and his system 
in 1919 as some Frenchmen in 1793 had for Robespierre 
and a French republic. It is probable, moreover, 
that some of the strongest supporters of the counter- 
revolutionary leaders were members of the upper classes 
and dispossessed landowners, who hoped that the over- 
throw of bolshevism would make possible a return of the 
privileges and possessions they had lost. Accordingly, a 
great number of Russian peasants, who had no desire for 
socialism and no understanding of it, rallied under the 
Bolsheviki to defeat reaction. In 1920, therefore, it 
seemed that bolshevism had established itself firmly, for 
the time being, in Russia. 

No event for a hundred years had aroused such strong 
feeling as this Russian Revolution, and such diverse 
opinions arose concerning it and such conflicting in- 
formation that it was almost impossible to find out the 
truth. It would seem that the Bolsheviki were only a 
small minority, perhaps not more than 600,000 in a 
population of 180,000,000. They succeeded because they 
acted with the most vigor and determination in a time of 



All opposi- 
tion crushed 



Causes of 
the success 
of the Bol- 
sheviki 



546 



EUROPE SINCE 1870 



The Russian 
people de- 
sire agrarian 
reform 



Prospect of 
the future 



distress and confusion. They were supported partly by 
Russian national spirit and partly by those who dreaded 
reaction. Furthermore, they maintained themselves by 
means of a reign of terror, and also because they held the 
chief cities and such railway facilities as remained. But 
it seemed probable that their extreme socialistic pro- 
gramme was a failure, and that they were doomed to fall. 
Most of the Russian peasants had no knowledge of social- 
ism and no desire for it, and in most of the country bolshe- 
vism never took root. Nevertheless, it was certain that 
the old Russia had gone, even as the old France was 
gone by 1795. Perhaps later on, after exceeding misery 
and exhaustion, the Russians, without autocracy and 
with the lands in possession of the people, would go for- 
ward in the construction of a new and better state, 
more nearly on the model of the great democracies else- 
where. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Socialism : in addition to the volumes cited in the bibliography 
at the end of Chapter V, The Socialism of To-Day, edited by W. 
E. Walling, J. G. P. Stokes, and others (1916), contains docu- 
ments and statements of principles; The Socialist Year Book 
and Labour Annual: a Guide Book to the Socialist and Labour 
Movement at Home and Abroad (published by the National 
Labour League, Manchester, 1913-); August Bebel, Aus 
Meinem Leben, 3 vols. (1910-14), abridged trans. My Life 
(1912); L. B. Boudin, The Theoretical System of Karl Marx in 
the Light of Recent Criticism (1907) ; Alfred Fouillee, Le Socialisms 
et la Sociologie Reformiste (1909); Robert Hunter, Socialists at 
Work (1908); Karl Kautsky, The Social Revolution (trans. 1907), 
Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History (trans. 1907), 
The Class Struggle (trans. 1910); Edmond Kelly, Twentieth 
Century Socialism (1910); Emile de Laveleye, Le Socialisms 
Contemporaine (2d ed. 1883) ; J. Longuet, Le Mouvement Social- 
iste International (1913); Franz Mehring, Geschichte der Deuts- 
chen Sozialdemokratie (1904), best on the subject, by a 
socialist; T. G. Masaryk, Die Philosophischen und Sociologischen 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 547 

Grundlagen des Marxismus: Studien zur Socialen Frage (1899); 
S. P. Orth, Socialism and Democracy in Europe (1913); J. Rae, 
Contemporary Socialism (ed. 1908), excellent; j£wie T. Stoddart, 
The New Socialism, an Impartial Inquiry (1909). 

By critics and opponents of socialism: H. C. Day, S. J., Catho- 
lic Democracy: Individualism, and Socialism (1914), Catholic; 
W. H. Mallock, A Critical Examination of Socialism (1907); A. 
Schaffle, trans, by B. Bosanquet, The Quintessence of Socialism 
(1880); V. G. Simkhovitch, Marxism versus Socialism (1913); 
O. D. Skelton, Socialism: a Critical Analysis (1911), excellent. 

Anarchism: P. J. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la Propriety? 
(1840), trans, by B. R. Tucker, What Is Property?, 2 vols. 
(1902); E. A. Vizetelly, The Anarchists (ed. 1916); E. V. Zenker, 
Anarchism (Eng. trans. 1898). 

Trade unions: L. T. Hobhouse, The Labour Movement (3d 
ed. 1912); Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The History of Trade 
Unionism (ed. 1920), Industrial Democracy (1902). 

Social problems: J. G. Brooks, The Social Unrest (1913); F. 
A. Ogg, Social Progress in Contemporary Europe (1912); Roger 
Fighiera, La Protection LSgale des Travailleurs en France (1913); 
Gabriel Hanotaux, La DSmocratie et le Travail (1910); Paul 
Leroy-Beaulieu, La Question Ouvriere au XIX' Siecle (1888); 
E. Levasseur, Questions Ouvrieres et Industrielles en France sous 
la Troisieme RSpublique (1907) ; A. R. Orage, ed.. National Guilds 
(1914); S. and B. Webb, Problems of Modern Industry (1898). 

Syndicalism: J. H. Harley, Syndicalism (1912); Robert Hun- 
ter, Violence and the Labor Movement (1914); Louis Levine, The 
Labor Movement in France (1912), best; J. A. Little, Industrial 
Warfare; the Aims and Claims of Capital and Labour (1912); 
Paul Louis, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical en France, 1789- 
1910 (2d ed. 1911), Le Syndicalisme Europeen (1914); Bertrand 
Russell, Roads to Freedom: Socialism^ Anarchism, and Syndical- 
ism (1918); Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la Violence (1809), 
trans, by T. E. Hulme, Reflections on Violence (1916); Philip 
Snowden, Socialism and Syndicalism (1913) ; J. Spargo, Syndical- 
ism, Industrial Unionism, and Socialism (1913). 

The Russian Revolution: Claude Anet, La Revolution Russe, 
4 vols. (1918-19); Otto Bauer, Bolschevismus oder Sozialde- 
mokratie (1920); Catherine Breshkovsky, A Message to the 
American People (1919); fitienne Buisson, Les Bolch6viki (1917- 
1919): Fails, Documents, Commentaires (1919); E. J. Dillon, 
The Eclipse of Russia (1918): A. F. Kerensky, The Prelude 



548 EUROPE SINCE 1870 

to Bolshevism, the Kornilov Rebellion (1919); Colonel V. I. 
Lebedeff, The Russian Democracy in Its Struggle Against the 
Bolshevist Tyranny (1919); Paul Miliukov, Bolshevism: an Inter- 
national Danger (1920); Report of the British Labour Delegation 
to Russia, 1920 (1920); E. A. Ross, Russia in Upheaval (1919); 
Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) ; 
Mrs. Philip Snowden, Through Bolshevik Russia (1920); John 
Spargo, Bolshevism.: the Enemy of Political and Industrial 
Democracy (1919); Leon Trotzky [Bronstein], The History of the 
Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk (1919). 

The bolshevist leaders: M. A. Landau-Aldanov, Lenine 
(1919); Nicolai Lenine [V. I. Ulianov], The State and Revolution 
(1919); L. Trotzky, Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class 
and International Revolution, 190^-1917 , collected and trans- 
lated by M. J. Olgin (1918), for many of the ideas about sup- 
pressing the bourgeoisie and erecting a dictatorship of the 
proletariat, and The Bolsheviki and World Peace (1918). 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 
EUROPEAN RULERS SINCE 1870 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

Francis Joseph, 1848-1916 Charles I, 1916-18 

BELGIUM 
Leopold II, 1865-1909 Albert I, 1909- 

BULGARIA 

Principality until 1909, kingdom afterward. 

Alexander, 1879-86 Boris I, 1918- 

Ferdinand I, 1887-1918 

DENIVIARK 

Christian IX, 1863-1906 Christian X, 1912- 

Frederick VIII, 1906-12 

FRANCE 

Government of National Defence, 1870-1 

Presidents of the French Republic 

Adolphe Thiers, 1871-3 Emile Loubet, 1899-1906 

Marshal MacMahon, 1873-9 Aral\nd Fallieres, 1906-13 

Jules Grevt, 1879-87 Raymond Poincare, 1913-20 

Sadi Carnot, 1887-94 Paul Deschanel, 1920 

Casimir-Perier, 1894-5 Alexandre Millerand, 
Felix Faure, 1895-9 1920- 

551 



552 APPENDIX 

THE GERMAN EMPIRE 

William I, 1871-88 William II, 1888-1918 

Frederick III, 1888 

Chancellors 

Prince Bismarck, 1871-90 
Count von Caprivi, 1890-4 
Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, 1894-1900 
Count von Bulow, 1900-8 
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, 1908-17 
Georg Michaelis, 1917 
Count von Hertling, 1917-18 
Prince Max of Baden, 1918 
The German Republic, 1918— 

THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND 

IRELAND 

Victoria, 1837-1901 George V, 1910- 

Edward VII, 1901-10 

Prime Ministers 

William Ewart Gladstone, 1868-74 

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield, 1876), 1874-80 

W. E. Gladstone (ii), 1880-5 

Robert Cecil (Marquis of Salisbury), 1885-6 

W. E. Gladstone (in), 1886 

Marquis of Salisbury (ii), 1886-92 

W. E. Gladstone (iv), 1892-4 

Archibald P. Primrose (Earl of Rosebery), 1894-5 

Marquis of Salisbury (in), 1895-1902 

Arthur James Balfour, 1902-5 

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 1905-8 

Herbert Henry Asquith, 1908-16 

David Lloyd George, 1916- 

GREECE 

George I, 1863-1913 Alexander I, 1917-1920 

CoNSTANTiNE I, 1913-17 CoNSTANTiNE I (restored) 1921- 



APPENDIX 553 

ITALY 
Victor Emmanuel II, 1849-78 Victor Emmanuel III, 1900- 

HUMBERT, 1878-1900 A^ v; S 5 '0 / / N I 

MONTENEGRO 

Principality until 1910; kingdom until 1918; then incorporated 
into Jugo-Slavia 

Nicholas I, 1860-1918 

THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS 
William III, 1849-90 Wilhelmina, 1890- 

NORWAY 

Ruled by the kings of Sweden, 1814--1905 

Haakon VII, 1905- 

THE POPES 

Pius IX, 1846-78 Pius X, 1903-14 

Leo XIII, 1878-1903 Benedict XV, 1914- 

PORTUGAL 

Luiz I, 1861-89 Manoel II, 1908-10 

Carlos, 1889-1908 Republic. 1910- 

PRUSSIA 

William I, 1861-88 ^^^ai^ . William II, 1888-1916, ;^^////-//<?'>" 
Frederick III, 1888J /^,«iWW //UiT- 

RUMANIA ^ 

Principality until 1881, kingdom afterward. 
Charles I, 1866-1914 Ferdinand I, 1914- 

RUSSIA 

Alexander II, 1855-81 Nicholas II, 1894-1917 

Alexander III, 1881-94 Provisional government, 1917 

Republic of Soviets, 1918 
Bolsheviki 



554 APPENDIX 

SERVIA 

Principality until 1882; kingdom afterward; in 1918 the ruler 
became king of the " Unitary Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slo- 
venes" (Jugo-Slavia). 

Milan, 1868-89 Peter I, 1903- 

Alexander, 1889-1903 

SPAIN 

Amadeo of Savoy, 1870-3 Alphonso XII, 1875-85 

Spanish Republic, 1873-5 Alphonso XIII, 1886- 

SWEDEN 

Charles XV, 1859-72 Gustavus V, 1907- 

OscAR II, 1872-1907 

TURKEY 

Abdul-Aziz, 1861-76 Mohammed V, 1909-18 

MuRAD V, 1876 Mohammed VI, 1918- 

Abdul-Hamid, 1876-1909 



J 



INDEX 



I 



INDEX 



Abdul Hamid, 193, 324. 

Abgeordnetenhaus, 311. 

Abyssinia, 349, 371, 389. 

Accident Insurance Laws, 163. 

Act of Union, concerning Scotland 
and England, 258; concerning Ire- 
land and Great Britain, 258. 

Adowa, 389. 

Adrianople, captured by the Turks, 
316; by the Russians, 323; by the 
Bulgars, 327, 328; reoccupied by 
the Turks, 331; ceded to Greece, 
336. 

Adriatic Sea, 13, 180, 305, 315, 350, 
428. 

^gean Sea, 305; islands of, 320. 

Affair of 1875, 233, 234. 

Afghanistan, 378, 405. 

Africa, in 1920, 522. 

Agadir, 411. 

Age of Reason, 29. 

Agrarian Reform, in Ireland, 260; in 
Rumania, 338, 339. 

Agricultural Laborers, in Great Bri- 
tain, 252. 

Agriculture, in the German Empire, 
152, 153; in Italy, 347; in Spain, 352. 

Aisne, Battle of the, 463. 

Alabama Claims, 101. 

Albania, 13, 319, 323, 325, 328, 334, 
416, 417, 519. 

Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, 111, 502. 

Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, 25, 112; 
accession of, 269, 270; emancipa- 
tion of the serfs by, 270; reforms 
under, 273; becomes conservative, 
274; assassination of, 280, 281. 

Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, reign 
of, 281-90; policy of, 281; reaction 
under, 282, 283; policy of Russifi- 
cation under, 283, 284, 287-9. 

Alexander, Prince of Battenberg, 340. 

Alexander Couza, 337, 338. 

Alfonso XII, King of Spain, 350. 

Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 350, 351. 

Algeciras, Conference of, 403. 

Algeciras Agreement, 403, 412. 

Algeria, 181, 382, 383, 394. 

Ali, Pasha of Janina, 319. 



Allies, The, advantages of in the Great 

War, 456, 457; superior resoiu-ces of, 

456; tenacity and moral coiu-age of,. 

457; command of the sea kept by, 

472-4; great offensive of, 492-4; 

triumph of, 495. 
Almanack de Gotha, 301. 
Alsace, 136. 
Alsace-Lorraine, under German rule, 

169, 170; taking of, 190; a Reichs- 

land, 310; desire for the recovery of, 

431; question of, 505, 506; ceded to 

France, 514. 
Amadeo of Savoy, 350. 
Americans, arrive in France, 491; 

take the St. Mihiel salient, 493; 

clear the Argonne, 493, 494. 
Amiens, 14, 490. 
Anarchism, 279, 280, 530, 531. 
Anatolia, 116, 195. 
Anden Regime, 7-9, 17-20. 
Anglo-French Agreement of 1899, 

384. 
Anglo-German Agreement of 1890, 

387. 
Anglo-German Agreement of 1914, 

207. 
Anglo-Russian Accord, 404, 405, 4S2. 
Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Britain, 256. 
Anglo-Saxon Tongue, 336. 
Angola, 387, 390. 
Annam, 383. 

Anne, Queen of England, 254. 
L'Annee Terrible, 211. 
Annual Register, 94. 
Antwerp, 358, 460, 475. 
Apprentices, 46. 
Arabi Pasha, 375. 
Arabian Nights, 435. 
Argand, 44. 

Argonne Forest, 493, 494. 
Aristocracy, 54-6. 
Aristotle, 336. 
ArkwTight, Richard, 46. 
Armentieres, 490. 
Armies, in earlier times, 123, 124; 

in the nineteenth century, 124-7; 

growth of in Europe, 425. 
Armistice (1918), 495. 



557 



558 



INDEX 



"Army of Maneuver," 492. 

Army System, reformed in France, 215. 

Arras, 490. 

Article 10, 513. 

Article 23, 513. 

Artificial Lighting, 9. 

Asia, in 1920, 522, 523. 

Asiatic Russia, 285. 

Asiatic Turkey, 434, 435. 

Asquith, H. H., 249, 261. 

Association Cvltuelle, 229. 

Association of the Congo, 370. 

Association of Worship, 229. 

Astronomy, 69. 

Ateliers Nationaux, 77, 78. 

Athenians, 34. 

Atlantic Ocean, passage across, 10. 

Atlantis, 371. 

Augsburg, 15. 

Ausgleich, 27, 33, 108; terms of, 109; 
difficulties attending renewals of, 
306, 307. 

Australia, 380. 

Austria, abolition of serfdom in, 25; 
Revolution of 1848 in, 27, 106; con- 
stitution proclaimed in, 27; suf- 
frage in, 32, 33; position of in the 
first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, 106; in earlier times, 108; 
peoples of, 108; defeated by France 
and by Prussia, 109; riiles part 
of Italy, 113, 114; takes part in 
the war about Schleswig-Holstein, 
128, 129; army of in the Austro- 
Prussian War, 130; beginning of, 
193, 433; decline of, 211; in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, 304; becomes part of the 
Dual Monarchy, 304; industrial de- 
velopment in, 306, 307; provinces 
of, 310; peoples of, 311; fate of, 
517, 521. 

Austria-Hungary, establishment of, 
108, 304, 305; rivaby of with Rus- 
sia, 175, 176, 178; makes an agree- 
ment with the German Empire and 
Russia, 175; alliance of with the 
German Empire, 179, 313; helps to 
form the Triple Alliance, 179-185; 
relations of with the German Em- 
pire, 197, 198; diversity of races in, 
284; relations of with Russia, 293, 
313; policy of, 304, 305; history of, 
305-15; parts of, 310-12; character 
of, 312; foreign policy of, 312-15; 
relations of with Servia, 315; pro- 
tects Turkey from Russian ag- 
gression, 318; acquires Bosnia and 



Herzegovina, 324, 333, 405-8, 436; 
in the Balkan Crisis of 1912-13, 
416, 417; desires to attack Servia 
in 1913, 418; outlets of, 428; ulti- 
matum of to Servia, 440; makes 
war on Servia, 442, 444; surrenders 
to the Allies, 494; dissolution of, 
516; socialism in, 534. 

Austrian Empire, 105. 

Austrian Note to Servia, 400, 440, 
441. 

Austrians, defeated in Poland, 467; 
lose Przemysl, 468; help to defeat 
the Russians at the Dimajec, 468; 
help to conquer Servia, 469, 470; 
invade Italy, 477; defeat the Italians 
at Caporetto, 484; overwhelmed by 
the Italians, 493, 494. 

Austro-Italian Frontier, 483. 

Austro-Prussian War, 107, 114, 130, 
131, 308. 

Azov, Sea oU 317. 

Babeuf, 75. 

Bacon, Roger, 40. 

Baden, government in, 165. 

Bagdad Railway, 195, 196, 207, 313, 
435, 436. 

Bakunin, Mikhail, 279, 280; on 
equality, 529; career of, 530. 

Balance of Power, 95. 

Balkan Crisis of 1912-13, 416, 417. 

Balkan League, 326. 

Balkan States, relations of with Aus- 
tria-Hungary, 314, 315; growth of, 
324; intrigues of in Macedonia, 325, 
326; unite against Turkey, 326; de- 
velopment of, 331-41. 

Balkan Wars, 313, 315, 327-31, 416, 
417. 

Balkans, slight progress of industrial- 
ism in, 54; changes in, 206; ambi- 
tions of Austria-Hungary in, 312; 
the German Empire and Austria- 
Hungary strive for predominance 
in, 3\3; conquered by the Turks, 
316; Turkish rule in, 316, 317; 
rivalry of the Great Powers in, 318, 
435, 436; the danger spot of Eu- 
rope, 325; political situation in, in 
1912-13, 417, 418; the German Em- 
pire desires to control, 434, 435. 

Ball, John, 74. 

"Baltic Barons," 286. 

Baltic Provinces, 286, 288, 522, 543. 

Baltic Sea, 13; under Swedish control, 
363; Russia and Germany on, 428. 

Baluchistan, 378. 



INDEX 



559 



Bapaume, 476. 

Barcelona, 533 

Bathing, 43. 

Bavaria, government in, 165. 

Bazaine, 136. 

Beaconsfield, Earl of, 240. 

Bebel, August. 533, 534. 

Belfort, 138,458,461. 

Belgians, resist the German invaders, 
459, 460; help to break the Hinden- 
burg Line, 493, 494. 

Belgium, suffrage in, 32; Industrial 
Revolution in, 54, 58; neutraliza- 
tion of, 118, 359; separation of from 
Holland, 118; in 1870, 119; joined 
with Holland, 355, 358, 359, 374; 
becomes independent, 356, 359; 
earlier history of, 358; conditions 
in, 359, 360; obtains the Congo 
country, 392; violation of the neu- 
trality of, 446; invasion of by the 
Germans, 459, 460; German meth- 
ods in, 485; war relief for, 485; in 
1920 519 

Benedict XJV, Pope, 346. 

Berchtold, Count, 421, 442. 

Berlin, voting in, 147; growth of, 153 

Berlin Conference, 376, 391. 

Bernhardi, General von, 438. 

Bessarabia, 337, 338, 522. 

Bethmann-Hollweg, von, 446. 

Bhutan, 379. 

Bible, 70, 72, 88. 

Bieberstein, von, 407, 408. 

Birth Rate, in France, 231 ; decline of, 
231; in Italy, 348, 431; in European 
countries, 430, 431. 

Biscay, Bay of, 12. 

Bismarck, Count Otto von, 32; 
speech of, 94; enters the Prussian 
ministry, 126; plans to obtain 
Schleswig and Holstein, 128, 129; 
diplomacy of before the Aiistro- 
Prussian War, 129; opposes Napo- 
leon III, 132; diplomacy of before 
the Franco-German War, 132-4; 
in the Franco-German War, 138; 
fiscal policy of, 155; contest of with 
the Roman Catholics, 159, 160; 
with the socialists, 161, 162; insti- 
tutes state socialism in the German 
Empire, 162, 163; on the position 
of the German Empire, 173; tasks 
of, 173, 174; diplomacy of, 175-87; 
at the Congress of Berlin, 178; great 
success of the foreign policy of, 
184, 185; passes from power, 188; 
great achievements of, 188, 189; 



methods of, 189; failure of, 190; on 
another war with France, 234, 235; 
the passing of, 235; reveals intri- 
gues of Napoleon III concerning 
Belgium, 359; encourages French 
colonial enterprise, 383; friend of 
Lassalle, 533. 

Bjorko, Secret Treaty of, 402. 

"Black Hundreds," 300. 

BlackSea, 11, 12, 14,428. 

Blanc, Louis, 77, 78, 79. 

Blanqui, Adolphe, 40, 46. 

Bloc, 219. 

"Blood and Iron," 189. 

"Board Schools," 248 

Boer War, 201, 377. 

Boers, 376. 

Bohemia, 306, 310, 507. 

Bolsheviki, 22; hatred of for the 
bourgeoisie, 56; in the Great War, 
482, 537; origin of, 540; ideas of, 
540, 541; assisted by the Germans, 
541; accept the Treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk, 542, 543; system of in 
Russia, 543, 544; regarded with 
suspicion in other countries, 544; 
at war with Poland, 544; defeat 
counter-re volut ionary attempts, 
544, 545; strength of, 545, 546. 

Bolshevist Propaganda in Germany, 
495. 

Bordeaux, 461. 

Borneo, 391. 

Bosnia, acquired by Austria-Hungary, 
178, 313, 315, 323, 324; annexed 
by Austria-Hungary, 324, 333, 405- 
8, 435; lost by Austria and Hun- 
gary, 510. 

Bosnia-Herzegovina, 310. 

Bosnia-Herzegovina Crisis, 405-8. 

Bosporus, 12. 

Boulanger, General, 224, 225. 

Boulanger Affair, 235. 

Bourbons, restoration of in France, 24; 
rule of in France, 104; family of, 217; 
rule of in Italy, 346; in Spain, 350. 

Bourgeoisie, in the old Regime, 8; 
become an industrial aristocracy in 
the nineteenth century, 10; in 
France, 20, 105; in the French 
Revolution, 22; rise of, 55; pre- 
dominance of after the Industrial 
Revolution, 55, 56; triumph of in 
France in 1848, 78; Marx and 
Engels on, 81; in Russia, 110; sup- 
press the Commune in Paris, 214; 
overthrow of desired by the Bol- 
sheviki, 541, 543. 



560 



INDEX 



Boxer Outbreak, 294. 
Boyen, 125. 

Brazil, slavery in, 25, 271; independ- 
ence of, 353; held by the Dutch, 390. 

Breach of Contract, in Russia, 282. 

Brest-Litovsk, 469. 

Briey Basin, 153. 

British, defeated in Belgium, 460; 
help to defeat the Germans at the 
Marne, 461; help to defend the 
Channel Ports, 464; failure of at 
the Dardanelles, 470-72; keep con- 
trol of the sea, 472-4; defeat the 
German fleet off Jutland, 473; in 
the Battle of the Somme, 476, 477 
capture Vimy and Messines, 480 
fail to break the German lines, 481 
great defeat of in Picardy, 490 
break the Hindenburg Line, 493, 
494. 

British East Africa, 376. 

British Empire, formation of, 95 
government of, 97, 98, 380-82 
extent of, 371; growth of, 371-9 
civil war in, 373; character of, 379, 
380; greatness of, 379, 380; weak- 
ness of, 380; peoples of, 380; in 
1920, 523. 

British Grand Fleet, 473, 474, 479. 

British Labor Committee, 251. 

British North America, 374. 

British People, sympathy of for 
France, 174; attitude of toward 
the German people, 174, 175. 

British South Africa Company, 370, 
377. 

Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count von, 498. 

Brusilov, General, 477. 

Brussels, 460. 

Bryce, Viscount, 498. 

Budapest, 305. 

Buddhists, in the British Empire, 
380. 

Buffon, 70. 

Building, 42. 

Bukowina, 310, 314. 

Bulgaria, relations of with Russia, 
315; with the Teutonic Powers, 315; 
conquered by the Turks, 316; re- 
bellion in against the Turks, 321; 
Turkish atrocities in, 323; freed 
from the Turks, 323, 324; complete 
independence of, 324; in the Balkan 
Wars, 327-31, 340; history of, 339, 
341; joins the Teutonic Powers in 
the Great War, 470; surrenders to 
the Allies, 493; losses of, 517. 

"Bulgarian Atrocities," 339'. 



Bulgarian Exarchate, 341. 

Bulgars, early history of, 339; origin 
of, 341; join the Teutonic Powers in 
the Great War, 470; help to con- 
quer Servia, 470. 

Bulow, von, 143, 183. 

Bundesrath, 145, 146. 

Bureaucracy in Russia, 300. 

Burma, 394. 

Butt, Isaac, 261. 

Byron, Lord, 13, 320. 

Cabet, Etienne, 79. 

Cabinet Government, 97, 144. 

Cables, Submarine, 11. 

"Cadets," 300. 

Calais, 464. 

Calvin, 80. 

Calvinists, 18, 28. 

Cambodia, 383. 

Cambrai, 476. 

Cambridge, 247. 

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 249. 

Canada, 380. 

Canada Government Act of 1840, 97. 

Canning, Stratford, 117. 

Canossa, 160. 

Canterbury Cathedral, 14. 

Cantons, Swiss, 360, 361. 

Cape Colony, 374, 376. 

Cape of Good Hope, 375. 

Capitalism, in the older industrial 
system, 47; in the Industrial Rev- 
olution, 48; abolition of desired by 
socialists, 81 ; syndicalist war against, 
532. 

Caporetto, Battle of, 484. 

"Capping the Line," 297. 

Carbonari, 114, 320. 

Carinthia, 310. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 193. 

Carniola, 310, 510. 

Carpathian Mountains, 12, 13, 15, 
16; struggle for the passes of, 468. 

Carso Plateau, 483. 

Carthage, 370, 451. 

Cartvmght, Edmund, 46. 

Cartwright, John, 30. 

Caspian Sea, 11, 12. 

Castelar, Emilio, 344, 350. 

Catalonia, 35. 

Catherine II, Tsaritsa of Russia, 318. 

Catholic Emancipation, 258. 

Catholic Party in the German Empire, 
160. 

Caucasia, 286, 287, 321, 522. 

Cavoiu", Count Camillo di, 114. 

Celebes, 391. 



INDEX 



561 



Celtic Language, 37. 

Celtic People, 256, 257. 

Center Party, 160. 

Central Europe, in the first half of 
the nineteenth century, 105-7. 

Central Position of the Teutonic 
Powers in the Great War, 455, 456. 

Cervantes, 382. 

Ceylon, 357, 374. 

Chamber of Deputies, 312. 

Champagne, battle in, 475. 

Champlain, Samuel de, 384. 

Channel Ports, 464, 475, 490, 492. 

Charleroi, 460. 

Charles, Prince of HohenzoUern- 
Sigmaringen, 337. 

Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, 345. 

Charter, of France, 26, 31. 

Chartism, 78. 

Chartists, 76,78. 

Chateau-Thierry, 491. 

Chemin des Dames, 481, 491. 

ChildLabor, 50, 51. 

Children in the Industrial Revolu- 
tion. 50, 51. 

China, decay of, 293; territory of 
seized by other Powers, 293, 294; 
in ancient times, 370; German rights 
in, 515; Austrian rights in, 517. 

Chinese, in the British Empire, 380. 

Chinese-Japanese War, 293. 

Christ, teachings of, 439. 

Christianity, suppressed in France, 
22; effects of upon the position of 
women, 62; communism in, 73, 74. 

Christians, treatment of in the Turk- 
ish Empire, 317. 

Church, lands of confiscated in France 
during the French Revolution, 21; 
measures against in France, 22; 
communism in, 73, 74; in the Mid- 
dle Ages, 84, 226; during the Refor- 
mation, 226; in Lutheran coun- 
tries, 226; in England, 226; in 
Catholic countries, 226. 

Church and State, in the German Em- 
pire, 158; in the Middle Ages, 226; in 
modern times, 226; in France, 226, 
227; separation of in France, 227- 
30; in Italy, 345, 346; in Spain, 351; 
in Portugal, 354. 

Church of England, 90, 98. 

Church of Ireland, 99, 260. 

Cinema, 10. 

Cities, increase of size and power of 
after the Industrial Revolution, 60, 
61; consequences of, 61, 62. 

Citizen Armies, in France, 138, 139. 



Civil Equality, 28 

Civil War, American, 101. 

Classes, Struggle of, 81. 

Cleanliness, 43. 

Clemenceau, 481, 504, 511, 512. 

Clericalism, in France, 227. 

Coal, 41, 45, 153. 

Coalition, First, against France, 35. 

Cochin China, 383. 

Code Napoleon, 23. 

Colonial Empire, of Great Britain, 
97, 98, 371-82, 523; of Spain, 115; 
of France, 236, 237, 382-5; of Ger- 
many, 385-9. 

Colonial Populations, treatment of, 
393, 394. 

Colonies, of Great Britain, 371-82; of 
France, 382-5; of the German 
Empire, 385-9; of Italy, 389, 390; 
of Spain, 390; of Portugal, 390; of 
Holland, 390, 391; of Belgium, 391, 
392. 

Command of the Sea, in the Great 
War, 456, 472-4. 

Commercial Development, in the 
German Empire, 155. 

Commimal Ownership of Land, in 
Russia, 272. 

Commune of Paris, 80, 83, 105, 211, 
212-14, 279, 530, 534, 535. 

Communes, in the Middle Ages, 213; in 
modern France, 213. 

Communism, in earlier times, 73, 74; 
in the French Revolution, 74, 75; 
belief in advanced by the Industrial 
Revolution, 75, 76; in England, 76; 
in France, 76-8; development of by 
Marx and Engels, 79-81; doctrines 
of, 81-4. 

Communist League, 79. 

Communist Manifesto, 56, 60, 79, 80, 
81, 82, 529. 

Compulsory Military Service, in 
France, 124, 215, 233; in Prussia, 
125-7; in Austria-Hungary, 307. 

Concordat of 1801, 23, 86, 226, 227, 229. 

Conference of London, 418. 

Congo Free State, 391, 392. 

Congress of Berlin, 178, 181, 265, 313, 
319, 323, 324, 332, 333, 335, 339, 374. 

Congress of Paris (1856), 265, 336. 

Congress of Paris (1919), public inter- 
est in, 499; assembling of, 502, 503; 
procedure at, 503, 504; questions 
to be discussed at, 504-11; business 
of, 511, 512. 

Congress of Vienna, 24, 86, 102» 113, 
360. 



562 



INDEX 



Conservatives, 248. 

Constantinople, 12, 14; captured by 

the Turks, 116, 316; desired by 

Russia, 292; controlling position of, 

428; question of, 511; left to the 

Turks, 518. 
Constitution of 1791 (France), 20, 30. 
Constitution of the Year I (France), 

362. 
Constitution of the Year III (France), 

22, 31. 
Constitution of the Year VIII 

(France), 23, 31. 
Constitution of 1812 (Spain), 26, 27. 
Constitution of 1814 (Norway), 33, 

364. 
Constitution of 1831 (Belgium), 32, 

359. 
Constitution of 1848 (Switzerland), 

33, 362 
Constitution of 1848 (Holland), 357. 
Constitution of 1849 (Denmark), 366. 
Constitution of 1850 (Prussia), 27. 
Constitution of 1863 (Sweden), 365. 
Constitution of 1875 (France), 217. 
Constitution of the United States, 30. 
"Constitutional Democrats," 300. 
Constitutional Progress in Europe, 

25-7. 
Constitutions and Government, 220. 
Control of the Sea, in the Great War, 

472-4. 
Convention of Gastein, 129. 
"Conversations" between Germany 

and France, 412. 
Copernicus, 68. 
Corn Laws, 57, 98, 152. 
Corrupt Practices Act, 241. 
Cortes, in Spain, 351; in Portugal, 353. 
Cossacks, 270. 
Council of State, in Russia, 299; in 

Switzerland, 361. 
Council of Trent, 90. 
Council of the Vatican, 90. 
Counter-Reformation, 158. 
Counter-revolutionary Movements in 

Russia, 544, 545. 
Courland, 286. 
Covenant of the League of Nations, 

512-14. 
Cracow, 468. 
Creation, 69, 70, 72. 
Crete, 335. 
Connies. 545 

Crimean War, 103, 111, 118, 318, 404. 
Crinoline, 7. 
Crises in Recent European history, 

399, 400. 



Crispi, Francesco, 344. 

Croatia, 510. 

Croatia-Slavonia, 310, 313. 

Crompton, Samuel, 46. 

Crown Prince, of the German Empire, 

492. 
Cuba, 390. 
Cyprus, 374. 
Cyrenaica, 390. 
Czecho-Slovak Troops, 508. 
Czecho-Slovakia, 515, 516, 521, 522. 
Czechs, 310, 311, 507, 508. 

Dahomey, 384. 

Dalmatia, 310, 313, 349, 510. 

Danes, 256. 

Danish War, 127-9. 

Danish West Indies, 366. 

Dannevirke, 128. 

Dante, 16, 68. 

Danton, 22. 

Danube River, 14, 428. 

Danubian Principalities, 321, 336, 337. 

Danzig, 48, 508, 514. 

Dardanelles, 12; attack upon, 470-2. 

Darwin, Charles, 71, 80, 81, 87. 

De Natura Rerum, 70. 

De Orbium Ccelestium Revolutionibus, 
68. 

Declaration of Independence, 30. 

Declaration of London, 409. 

Declaration of the Rights of Man 
(French), 17, 28. 

Degeneracy, 51. 

Delcasse, Theophile, 400, 403. 

"Delegations," 305. 

Democracy, in Europe, 9; ideas of 
in the French Revolution, 21; 
among the Greeks, 28; little idea 
of in the eighteenth century, 28; in 
ancient times, 28; in the :even- 
teenth century, 28; at the end of the 
eighteenth centiu-y, 29, 30; during 
the French Revolution, 30; ad- 
vanced by the Industrial Revolution, 
60, 61; slow progress of in the 
German Empire, 164-6; making 
the world safe for, 498, 499. 

"Democratic Control" of Industry, 
251. 

Denikine, General, 544, 545. 

Denmark, suffrage in, 33; troubles of 
concerning Schleswig and Holstein, 
127-9; in earlier times, 362, 363; 
in the nineteenth century, 365, 366. 

Descent of Man, 71. 

Devtsckes Reich, 144. 

Deidschland und der Nachste Krieg, 438. 



INDEX 



563 



Diderot, 20, 228. 

Diplomatic Revolution of 1904-7, 
201, 202. 

"Direct Action," 251. 

Directory, 75. 

Discourse Concerning Inequality among 
Men, 74. 

Dissenters, 31, 98. 

Divina Commedia, 68. 

Divine Right, 9, 26, 147, 148, 151, 

Dobrudja, 337. 

Dollinger, 159. 

Domestic System of Manufacturing, 
46, 47, 48. 

Donnersmarck, Count von, 402, 403. 

Drang nach Osten, 194. 

Dreadnaughi, 203. 

Dreikaiserhund, 175. 

Dreyfus Affair, 225, 226. 

"Dropping the Pilot," 188. 

Dual Alliance (France and Russia), 
197; terms of, 210; formation of, 
235, 236, 291; relations of Great 
Britain to, 266; position of, 398; 
weakened, 402. 

Dual Alliance (German Empire and 
Austria-Hungary), 179; treaties of, 
182. 

Dual Control, of Egypt, 375. 

Dual Monarchy, founded, 108, 304, 
305; career of, 305-15; parts of, 
310-12; character of, 312; foreign 
policy of, 312-15; end of, 521 . 

"Dualism," in Austria-Hungary, 305. 

Dublin, rebellion in, 263, 264; indus- 
trial disorders in, 533. 

Dulcigno, 332. 

Duma, First Imperial, 299, 300; 
Second, 301; Third, 301, 539. 

Dumas (Councils), 273, 282. 

Dunajee River, 468. 

Dunkirk, 464. 

Durazzo, 327, 333, 416, 417. 

Dutch, rise of, 354, 355. 

Dutch Colonial Administration, 357. 

Dutch Colonies, 390, 391. 

Dutch East India Company, 370. 

Dutch Guiana, 391. 

Earth, Age of, 71. 
East India Company, 372, 374. 
East Prussia, 145. 
Eastern Roman Empire, 316. 
Eastern Rumelia, 340. 
Ebert, President of the German Re- 
public, 520. 
Ecclesiastics, Appointment of, 227. 
Education, spread of in the nineteenth 



century, 36; advanced by the In- 
dustrial Revolution, 60, 61; re- 
form of in France, 221, 222; clerical 
influence upon in France, 227; 
partly controlled by religious orders, 
228; partly controlled by the 
Church in Great Britain, 247; im- 
provement of in Great Britain, 247, 
248; lack of in Russia, 288; in 
Austria-Hungary, 306. 

Education Act of 1870, 247, 248. 

Edward VII, King of Great Britain 
and Ireland, 202, 401. 

Egypt, 370, 374; acquired by the 
British, 374, 375; condition of the 
people in, 394. 

Einkreisung, 166, 205. 

Electoral Law, in Russia, 301. 

Electoral Reform, in the United King- 
dom, 31, 32, 240, 241. 

Electoral Reform Law of 1832, 96; of 
1867, 96, 101, 240; of 1884, 241; 
of 1918, 246. 

Electricity, 41. 

Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, 308. 

Emancipation of the Serfs in Russia, 
270, 271, 272; results of, 272, 273. 

Emigration, from Ireland, 259; from 
Italy, 348. 

Empire of Austria, 310; see Austria. 

Ems Dispatch, 133, 189. 

Engels, Friedrich, 79, 80. 

England, geographical position of, 
13; nationality in, 34; increase of 
popidation in, 56; agricultm-e in, 
57; changes caused by the Indus- 
trial Revolution in, 58; position 
of women in, 63; in earlier times, 
94; united with Scotland, 95; for- 
eign policy of, 95; the Church in, 
226; conquered by the Danes, 363. 

English, The, build up a great empire, 
371-9. 

English Channel, 13, 428. 

English Soldiers, in the Middle Ages, 
95. 

English-speaking Peoples, civil wars 
among, 100; relations between, 100, 
101 ; solidarity of, 524; duty of, 524. 

An Englishman s Home, 203, 204. 

Entente, between Russia and France, 
235. 

Entente Cordiale, formation of, 202, 
384, 399, 400, 401, 432; settlement 
of the Egyptian question by, 375; 
strengthened, 403. 

Epirus, 335. 

Erin. 256. 



564 



INDEX 



Esthonia, 286. 

Etats Generaux, 19. 

Eton, 247. 

Europe, importance of, 7; in the Old 
Regime, 7-9; conditions in in 1870, 
7, 9, 10; geography of, 11-14; 
great plain of, 12; rivers of, 12; old 
buildings and remains in, 14, 15; 
historical associations of, 15, 16; 
conditions in before the French 
Revolution, 17-20; growth of the 
power of, 369-71; divided between 
great rival combinations, 399; 
great crises in, 399, 400, 401-19, 
440-4; just before the Great War, 
419. 

Evolution, 70-3. 

Exhaustion, of the combatants in the 
Great War, 489, 490. 

Fabian Society, 535, 536. 

Factory Legislation in Great Britain, 

249. 
Falk Laws, 159. 
Falkland Islands, 373; battle near, 

473. 
Pashoda, 237, 376, 384. 
Fashoda Dispute, 194. 
Fathers and Sons, 279. 
Federal Assembly, Swiss, 361. 
Fenians, 99, 261. 
Ferdinand, Prince of Saxe-Coburg, 

340. 
Feudal System, 34, 54. 
"Financial Mobilization," 415. 
Finland, acquired by Russia, 118, 

285, 364; lost to Russia, 287, 522, 

543; privileges withdrawn from, 

288; constitution restored to, 299. 
First Balkan War, 315, 319; causes of, 

326, 327; course of, 327-9; effects 

of, 416. 
Piume, 428, 506. 
Flanders, 58, 481. 
Florence, 15, 345. 
Flottenverein, 200, 204. 
Foch, General, afterwards Marshal, 

462, 491, 493. 
Folketking, 366. 

Foreign Affairs, Control of, 501. 
Forstner, Lieutenant von, 168. 
42-Centimeter Guns, 460. 
Fourier, 77, 78. 
"Fourteen Points," 500-2. 
Francs-tirevrs, 139. 
France, Greek and Roman remains 

in, 14; conditions in during the 

Old Regime, 19; constitutions of. 



26; development of democracy in, 

29, 30; franchise in, 30, 31; national- 
ism in, 34, 35; Industrial Revolution 
in, 53, 104; land in bought by the 
peasants, 75; growth of socialism in, 
76-8, 104, 105; in 1870, 101-4, 
134, 135; earlier history of, 102-4; 
relations of with Prussia, 103, 104; 
social progress in, 104, 105; na- 
tional armies of in the French 
Revolution, 124; army of in 1870, 
134, 135; in the Franco-German 
War, 136-9; accepts the Treaty 
of Frankfort, 139-41; downfall of in 
1870, 210; disasters suffered by in 
1870-1, 211; inherent greatness of, 
211, 212; recovery of, 212; com- 
munard attempt in, 212-14; re- 
public proclaimed in, 212, 215; 
republic established in, 215, 217; 
government of, 217-19; develop- 
ment of self-government in, 219, 
220; reform of education in, 221, 
222; higher education in, 222, 223; 
material progress in, 223; plottings 
of the Monarchists in, 224; domes- 
tic crises in, 224-6; Chiu"ch and 
State in, 226, 227; separation of 
Church and State in, 227-30; na- 
tional wealth in, 230; standard of 
living and birth rate in, 231-3; 
high civilization in, 233; foreign 
relations of, 233-7; becomes a 
partner in the Dual Alliance, 235; 
relations of with Great Britain, 236, 
237, 265, 266, 400, 401; interest 
of in Egypt, 375; colonial empire of, 
382-5; relations of with Germany, 
400; assurance of strengthened, 
410; does not yield to Germany in 
1911, 412, 413; nearly overwhelmed 
by the Germans in 1914, 460, 461; 
German practices in, 485; in 1920, 
519; syndicalism in, 532; socialism 
in, 534. 

Franchise, in France in 1791, 20; 
in the United States, 30; in France, 

30, 31; in Great Britain, 30; exten- 
sion of in central and southern 
Europe, 32, 33; in northern Europe, 
33; extension of in the United King 
dom, 96; in Russia, 299, 301; in 
Austria, 310, 311; in Hungary, 312 
in Italy, 345; in Spain, 356; in Hol- 
land, 357; in Belgium, 359, 360 
in Norway, 364, 365; in Denmark 
366, 367. 

Franco-German War, causes of, 131-4 



INDEX 



565 



course of, 134-9; results of, 139-41; 
immediate cause of, 350. 

Franco-Prussian War, see Franco- 
German War. 

Frankfort Parliament, 27, 107. 

Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 308, 
314, 422, 440. 

Franz Josef, Emperor-King of Austria- 
Hungary, 308. 

Fraternity, 33, 34. 

Frederick III, German Emperor, 149. 

Frederick the Great, 189. 

Free Negroes, 271. 

"Freedom of the Seas," 501, 502, 
504. 

Freeman, E. A., 193. 

French, The, in the Great War, await 
the German attack, 458, 459; 
defeated in Alsace and in Lorraine, 
459; defeated in Belgium, 4G0; 
retreat of, 460, 461; defeat the 
Germans at the Marne, 461-2; 
drive the Germans back to the 
Aisne, 463; help to defend the Chan- 
nel Ports, 464; failure of at the Dar- 
danelles, 470-72; help to keep con- 
trol of the seas, 473; fail in the Cham- 
pagne, 475; defend Verdun, 475, 
476; in the Battle of the Somme, 
476, 477; fail to break the German 
line, 481; great defeat of at Chemin 
rfesZJames, 490, 491. 

French Army, increased, 419. 

French Cochin China, 383. 

French Colonial Empire, 382-5; ex- 
tent of, 384, 385; character of, 385. 

French Congo, 384, 415. 

French Culture, in the eighteenth 
century, 19. 

French Guiana, 382. 

French Revolution, 17, 20-2; causes 
of, 19, 20; resdts of, 23-7; develop- 
ment of nationalism during, 35; 
retards the Industrial Revolution 
on the Continent, 55; affects the 
position of women only indirectly, 
C2. 03; affects the Church, 86; 
effects of in England, 96; slight 
effect of in Russia, 110; effects of in 
Spain, 115; agrarian consequences 
of in France, 231; women's move- 
ment in, 242. 

French Somaliland, 383. 

French Yellow Book about the Dual 
Alliance, 236. 

"Frightfulness," 486. 

Fulton, Robert, 42. 

"Fundamental Laws" in Russia, 300. 



Gaelic Language, 168. 

Gaelic League, 263. 

Galicia, 310, 311, 467, 468. 

Galileo, 16, 437. 

Gallipoli, 470-2. 

Garibaldi, 85, 114. 

Gas, used for illumination, 43. 

General Strike, in Russia, 298; in 
Belgium, 860. 

General Workingmen's Association, 
533. 

Genesis, 70. 

Geneva, 29, 808. 

Geographical Factors, a cause of the 
Great War, 427-30, 

Geology, 71. 

George II, King of Great Britain and 
of Ireland, 370. 

George III, King of Great Britain 
and of Ireland, 258, 370. 

George, Lloyd, 163, 249, 252, 253, 
261, 264; on small nations, 344; at 
the Congress of Paris, 504, 512. 

German Army, in 1918, 137; increased, 
419; at the beginning of the Great 
War, 451-4; limited, 515. 

German Colonial Empire, 385-9. 

German Colonies, question of, 505, 

German Commanders, 452, 453. 

German East Africa, 386, 

German Empire, increase of popu- 
lation in, 57, 59, 232; military 
strength of increased by the In- 
dustrial Revolution, 59; founding of, 
141; the grand age of, 143-4; 
government of, 144-6; rulers of, 
148-50; system of government in, 
150—2; immense economic develop- 
ment in, 152-7; growth of popula- 
tion in, 157, 158; domestic prob- 
lems in, 158-62; state socialism in, 
102-4; slow progress of democracy 
in, 164-7; militarism in, 167, 
168; treatment of subject races in, 
168-71 ; position of after 1871, 173; 
alliance of with Austria-Hungary, 
179; helps to make the Triple Alli- 
ance, 179-85; renews good relations 
with Russia, 185, 186; new genera- 
tion rising in, 187; new policy takes 
shape in, 191, 192; relations of with 
Great Britain, 193, 198-207, 266, 
431-3; with Turkey, 193, 194, 313; 
with Austria-Hungary, 197, 198, 
313; maritime development of, 199; 
naval ambitions of, 200; naval ex- 
pansion of, 200; naval program of 
accelerated, 203; policy of affected 



566 



INDEX 



by changes in the Balkans, 206; 
education in, 222; higher education 
in, 222, 223; relations of with Rus- 
sia, 292, 293; preeminence of in 
Europe, 398, 399; imposing posi- 
tion of in 1909-11, 408, 409; yields 
in the Morocco Crisis of 1911, 413- 
15; bitterness in against Great 
Britain, 416; opposed to disarma- 
ment, 427; promises support to 
Austria-Hungary, 442; negotiations 
of with Russia, 443; declares war 
on Russia, 444; on France, 444; 
violates the neutrality of Luxem- 
burg and of Belgium, 445, 446; 
revolution in, 495; losses of by the 
Treaty of Versailles, 514, 515; 
end of, 519, 520; revolutions in, 
520; socialism in, 533, 534; weakened 
by Bolshevism, 544. 

German High Seas Fleet, 473, 474; 
sinking of, 518. 

German Methods in the Great War, 
485, 486. 

German Naval Laws, 431, 432. 

German Officers, 452. 

German People, expansion of east 
and southward, 193, 194. 

German Railway System, 454, 455. 

German Republic, 520. 

German Southwest Africa, 386. 

German System of Government, 150, 

151, 165, 166; character of, 151, 

152, 164, 166, 167. 
German Trade, 155, 156. 
Germanic Confederation, 106, 129, 

131, 
Germans, military triumphs of, 122- 
41; military reputation of, 123, 134; 
conduct of in France in 1870-1, 139; 
in Russia, 286, 287; in Austria, 300, 
310; rivalry of with the British in 
Africa, 387; disappointment of 
about colonial acquisitions, 386, 
387; character and ambitions of, 
436, 437; belief of in their racial 
superiority, 437; glorification of 
war by, 437, 438; arrogance and 
ambition of, 438; doctrines of, 439; 
advantages of in the Great War, 
451-6; defeat the French in Alsace 
and in Lorraine, 459; invade Bel- 
gium, 459; advance into France, 
460, 461; defeated at the Marne, 
461-3; great success of, 463, 464; 
fail- to take the Channel Ports, 
464; defeat the Russians at Tannen- 
berg, 467; defeat the Russians at 



the Dunajec, 468; Invade Russia, 
468, 469; conquer Servia, 409, 470; 
defeated at Jutland 473; fail at 
Ypres, 475; at Verdun, 475, 476; 
in the Battle of the Somme, 476, 
477; check the Russians, 477, 478; 
submarine warfare of, 478-80; re- 
treat of, 480; hold then- lines, 481; 
help to defeat the Italians at Cap- 
oretto, 484 ; grand offensive of, 490, 
491; fail to destroy the Allies, 491; 
overwhelmed by the Allies, 493, 
494; surrender, 495; assist the 
Bolsheviki, 541. 

Germany, end of serfdom in, 25; 
unification of, 36; Industrial Revo- 
lution in, 54; in 1920, 520, 521. 

Gibraltar, 12, 373. 

Giovine Italia, 114. 

Girondists, 74. 

Gladstone, W. E., 247. 261, 323, 369. 

Glasgow, 252. 

Gneisenau, 125. 

"God-fearing" Men, 29. 

Godwin, Mary, 242. 

Goidels, 256. 

Gold Coast, 372. 

Gorizia, 477. 

Gortchakov, 179. 

Government, in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, 8; in the nineteenth century, 
9; in Europe before the French 
Revolution, 18. 

Government of National Defence 
(France), proclamation of, 210. 

"Governments," 273. 

Grand Army, 235. 

Gravelotte— St. Privat, 136. 

Great Britain, government in in the 
eighteenth century, 18, 19; consti- 
tution of, 25, 26; franchise in, 30; 
Industrial Revolution begins in, 
44-6; course of in, 40-53; growth of 
socialism in, 70; formation of, 95; 
relations of with the United States, 
100; attitude of toward the German 
Empire, 174; relations of with the 
Triple Alliance, 183; with the Ger- 
man Empire, 193, 198-207, 431-3; 
enters the Entente Cordiale with 
France, 202; makes agreement with 
Russia, 202; seeks a good under- 
standing with the German Empire, 
205-7, 432, 433; growth of popula- 
tion in, 232; attitude of in the Affair 
of 1875, 234; relations of with 
France, 236, 237, 400. 401; electoral 
reform in, 240, 241; women's suf- 



INDEX 



567 



frage movement in, 241-6; posi- 
tion of women in, 242; reform of 
education in, 247, 248; social and 
economic reforms in, 248, 249; 
trade miions in, 249, 250; Labor 
Party in, 250, 251; power of Labor 
in, 251; distribution of Mcaltli in, 
252; ownership of land in, 252, 253; 
constitutional reform in, 253-G; 
relations of with Ireland, 25G-65; 
foreign relations of, 2G5, 266; rela- 
tions of with Russia, 293, 404; helps 
to preserve the Turkish Empire, 
318; makes treaties about the neu- 
trality of Belgium, 359; purchases 
controlling interest in the Suez 
Canal, 375; obtains sphere of in- 
fluence in Persia, 379; rivalry of 
with Germany in Africa, 387; 
fear of the German Empire in, 410, 
432; supports France in 1911, 413; 
dominant position of, 428, 429; 
naval construction in, 432; policy 
of concerning France, 433; desires 
to prevent the Great War, 443; 
wishes to stay out, 445; promises 
assistance to France, 445; declares 
war on the German Empire, 446; 
socialism in, 535-7; chance for 
Bolshevism being established in, 
536. 

Great Famine, in Ireland, 99, 259. 

Great General Staff, German, 444, 
445. 

Great Powers, note of concerning the 
status quo in European Turkey, 
327; propose mediation in the First 
Balkan Wtir, 328; seize spheres of 
influence in China, 378; in the Bal- 
kan Crisis of 1912-13, 416, 417. 

Great Russians, 284, 289. 

Great War, industrial power in, 59, 
60; women of Great Britain in, 246; 
possibility of, 421, 422; general 
causes of 440-4; immediate causes 
of, 440-4; beginning of, 444-6; 
declarations of hostilities in, 450; 
destructiveness of, 451; opposing 
forces in, 451-7; German plan in, 
457, 458; early French failures in, 
459; Germans invade Belgium, 459, 
460; Germans invade France, 461; 
Battle of the Marne, 461-3; strug- 
gle for the Channel Ports, 464; 
successes of the Russians, 467; 
Russians defeated in East Prussia, 
467; fighting in the east, 467, 468; 
'Russians defeated at the Dunajec, 



468; their disastrous retreat, 468, 
469; Servia conquered, 469, 470; 
Gallipoli, 470-2; Allies keep control 
of the sea, 472-4; Battle of Jutland, 
473; fighting on the west front, 
474, 475; Verdun, 475, 476; Battle 
of the Somme, 476, 477; fighting 
on the Austro-Italian front, 477; 
Russian offensive, 477, 478; con- 
quest of Rumania, 478; work of the 
German submarines, 478-80; fail- 
ures of the Allies in 1917, 480, 481; 
Russia withdraws from the War, 
482; Caporetto, 482, 484; havoc 
VTOught by the submarines, 484; 
the United States joins the Allies, 
484-8; the submarines checked, 
488; general exhaustion, 489; great 
German offensive, 400, 491; Allied 
offensive, 492-4; Bulgaria sur- 
renders, 493; Turkey surrenders, 
493; Austria-Hungary collapses, 
493, 494; Germany surrenders, 495; 
settlement following, 498-527; cost 
of to the Allies, 505; terrible conse- 
quences of, 524-7; cost of, 525; 
loss of life in, 525, 526; effects of in 
Russia, 538, 539. 

Great Western, 42. 

Greece, renewed study of the Greek 
classics in, 36; becomes inde- 
pendent, 117; condition of in 1870, 
118; in the Balkan Wars, 327- 
31, 335; history of, 334-6; in the 
Great War, 335, 336; after the 
War, 336; conditions in, 336; 
ancient, 370. 

Greek, study of, 36, 320. 

Greek Catholic Chiu-ch, 84, 85, 284; 
in Servia, 334; in Greece, 336; in 
Rumania, 339; in Bulgaria, 341; 
among the South Slavs, 434. 

Greek Independence, War for, 313, 
319, 320, 321. 

Greenland, 363, 366. 

Grey, Sir Edward, 207, 401, 441. 

Griffith, Arthur, 263. 

Grillparzer, Franz, 304. 

Guadeloupe, 382. 

Guesde, Jules, 535. 

Guilds, regulations of, 45; disap- 
pearance of in England, 46. 

Gustavus Adolphus, 363. 

Habeas Corpus, 19. 

The Hague, peace conferences at, 

426, 427. 
Hague Tribunal, 421, 442. 



568 



INDEX 



Haig, Sir Douglas, 490. 

Haldane, Lord, 206, 207. 

Hamburg-America Steamship Com- 
pany, 155. 

Hanotaux, 400. 

Hapsburg, House of, 304, 308. 

Hardenberg, 125. 

Hargreaves, James, 45. 

Harrison, Frederic, 122. 

Heating of Houses, 9, 41. 

Hebert, 87. 

Heine, 193. 

Helgoland, 374, 376, 472, 515. 

Helvetic Republic, 360. 

Henry IV, Emperor of the Holy Ro- 
man Empire, 160. 

Henry IV, King of France, 502. 

Herzegovina, acquired by Austria- 
Hungary. 178, 313, 315, 323, 324; 
rebellion in, 321; annexed by 
Austria-Hungary, 324, 333, 405-8, 
435, 436; lost by Austria and 
Hungary, 510. 

Hetairia Philike, 320. 

"High Court of Parliament," 254. 

Higher Criticism, 88. 

Hindenburg, von, 467, 468. 

Hindenburg Line, 493, 494. 

Histoire Natnrcllc, 70. 

Holland, suffrage in, 32; in 1870, 118; 
decline of, 211; earlier history of, 
354, 355; in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, 355-7; relations of with Great 
Britain, 356; with the German Em- 
pire, 356, 357; during the Great 
War, 357; colonial possessions of, 
357, 390, 391; government of, 
357. 

Holstein, 118, 127-9, 131, 366. 

Holy Roman Empire. 105, 113, 227. 

Holy Synod of Russia, 281, 288. 

Home Rule, 256. 

Home Rule Bill (1886). 261; (1893), 
261; (1912), 261, 263. 

Honduras, 372. 

Ilong Kong, 377. 

Horsley. Bishop, 28. 

Hours of Labor, regulated for women 
and children, 53; in the United 
Kingdom, 98. 

House of Commons, 96, 254, 255. 

House of Lords, 253-5, 261, 412. 

Hudson Bay, 373. 

Ilumanitarianism, 63, 

Hundred Years War, 123, 211, 451. 

Hungary, abolition of serfdom in, 
25; Revolution of 1848 in, 27, 106; 
constitution proclaimed in, 27; 



suffrage in, 32, 33; peoples in, 108; 
becomes a part of the Dual Mon- 
archy, 305; agricultural develop- 
ment in, 306, 307; parts of, 310; 
government of, 311, 312; con- 
quered by the Turks, 316; aban- 
doned by the Turks, 317; fate of, 
517, 521. 

"Hunger Strike," 245. 

Huns, 16, 451. 

Hutton, James, 70. 

Huxley, T. H., 67, 72, 87. 

Hyndman, H. M., 535. 

Iceland, 363, 366. 

Ikons, 85. 

Illiteracy, 11; in France, 222; in Ger- 
many, 222; in Russia, 283. 

Immaculate Conception, 89. 

Imperialism, 392, 393, 394. 

"In Flanders Fields," 450. 

Indemnity, paid by France to Ger- 
many, 141, 211, 214; to be paid by 
Germany, question of, 504, 505, 515. 

Independent Ireland, struggle for, 
264, 265. 

Independent Labor Party, 250, 536. 

India, 374, 378. 381, 394. 

Indian Mutiny, 374. 

Industrial Disorders, in France, 
411, 412; in Great Britain. 412. 

Industrial Growth, in the German 
Empire, 153. 154. 

Industrial Revolution, contributes 
to the development of nationalism, 
36; earlier stages of, 44, 45; in Great 
Britain, 45-53; spreads eastward 
across Europe, 53, 54; effects of, 
54-65; causes growth of commun- 
istic ideas, 75; in France, 104; 
in the German Empire, 154; ef- 
fect of upon the position of wo- 
men, 64, 242; in Russia, 291, 292; 
in Austria-Hungary, 306. 

Industrial Workers of the World, 532. 

Industrialism, in Belgium. 359. 

Industry, regulation of by the State, 
49; um-egulated. 50. 

Infallibility of the Popes, 90. 

Initiative, 362. 

Intellectual Changes in Modern 
Times. 67-91. 

International Association of the 
Congo, 391. 

International Engagements, weak- 
ening of. 409. 

International Working Men's Associ- 
ation, 80. 



INDEX 



569 



Internationale, 80, 

Ionian Islands, 335. 

Ireland, condition of the people in, 
18; nationalism in, 37; united with 
Great Britain, 95, 258; conditions 
in, 98, 99, 258, 259; relations of with 
Great Britain, 256-65; early his- 
tory of, 256, 257; conquest of, 
257; famine in, 259; improvement 
of conditions in, 259, 260; move- 
ment for Home Rule in, 261, 263; 
geographical relation of to Great 
Britain, 264; ravaged by the Danes, 
362. 

Irish in the service of France, 124. 

Irish Convention, 264. 

Irish Language, study of, 263. 

Irish Literary Revival, 263. 

Irish Question, 256-65. 

Irish Republic, 264. 

Iron, 45, 153. 

Isabella II, Queen of Spain, 350. 

Istria, 310. 

Italia Irredenta, 349, 474, 506. 

Italian Colonies, 389, 390. 

Italian Frontier, 50G. 

Italian Provinces, lost by Austria, 
308. 

Italian Somaliland, 389. 

Italians, in Austria-Hungary, 310; 
join the Allies in the Great War, 
474; progress of, 477; defeated at 
Caporetto, 484; overwhelm the 
Austrians, 493, 494. 

Italy, disappearance of serfdom in, 25; 
suffrage in, 32; unification of, 3G, 
114, 344, 345; Industrial Revolu- 
tion in, 54; in earlier times, 112, 113; 
in the first half of the nineteenth 
century, 113, 114; makes an alli- 
ance with Prussia, 129; becomes a 
member of the Triple Alliance, 179- 
82; relations of with France, 180, 
181, 197; ambitions of in Tunisia, 
181; weak frontier of, 181; less at- 
tached to the Triple Alliance, 182, 
184; makes a "reinsurance treaty" 
with France, 184; relation of with 
other members of the Triple Alli- 
ance, 197; seizes Tripoli, 324, 325; 
government of, 345; Chiu"ch and 
State in, 345, 346; domestic history 
of, 340-8; nationalism in, 348, 349; 
foreign relations of, 349, 350; rela- 
tions of with Austria-Hungary, 
349; enters the Great War, 350, 
474; refuses to join in attack on 
Servia in 1913, 418; in 1920, 519. 



Jacobins, 23, 74. 

Jamaica, 372. 

Janina, 319, 327, 328. 

Janissaries, 316, 317. 

Japan, progress of, 293; fears Russia. 
294; at war with Russia, 294-7; 
triumph of, 297, 298; increase of 
population in, 348; commanding 
position of in the Far East, 428; 
in 1920, 523. 

Jaures, Jean, 535. 

Java, 391. 

Jena, 124. 

Jesuits, 159. 

Jesus, 73, 74. 

Jewish Pale, 288. 

Jews, in Russia, 286, 288. 

Joffre, 461. 

Judicial System in Russia, reformed, 
273. 

Jugo-Slavs, in Austria-Hungary, 306; 
aims of conflict with Italy's de- 
sires, 506; question of, 510, 511; 
in 1920, 519, 522; see South Slavs. 

Junkers, 145, 146, 152, 520. 

Jury, Trial by, introduced into Rus- 
sia. 273. 

Justices of the Peace, 273. 

Jutland, Battle of, 473. 

Kaiser, of the German Empire, 145, 

148. 
Kamerun, 386. 
Kapital, Das, 80. 
Kara George, 332, 333. 
Karageorgevich, House of, 333. 
Kay, John, 45. 
Kepler, 69. 
Kerensky, 540, 542. 
Kiao-chau, 294, 472. 
Kiel Canal, 366, 472, 515. 
Kiev, 541, 544. 
Kingdom of Hungary, 310; see 

Hungary. 
Kingdom of Italy, 32, 112, 114, 345; 

see Italy. 
Kipling, Rudyard, 369. 
Kirk-Kilisse, 328. 
Kitchener, General, 376. 
Kluck, General von, 461. 
Kolchak, Admiral, 544, 545. 
Koniggriitz, Battle of, 130. 
Korea, 294, 297. 
Koweit, 195. 

Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege, 427. 
Kulturlcampf, 159, 170, 
Kumanovo, 327. 



570 



INDEX 



Labor Disputes in Great Britain, 251. 
Labor in Great Britain during the 

Great War, 251. 
Labor Laws in the United Kingdom, 

98. 
Labor Party in Great Britain, 250, 

251. 
Laissez-faire, doctrine of, 49, 50; 

partly abandoned, 52, 53; abandoned 

in the German Empire, 155. 
Lamps, 44. 
Land, in France, divided among small 

proprietors, 21, 231; in Russia, 

231; ownership of in Great Britain, 

252, 253; ownership of in Ireland, 

257, 260; in Italy, 347; in Norway, 

364; in Russia in 1920, 546. 
Land Captains, 282. 
Land Laws, affecting Ireland, 260, 

334. 
Land Purchase Acts (Ireland), 334. 
Landlords, English, in Ireland, 257. 
Landsturm, 125. 
Landtag of Prussia, 126. 
Landwekr, 125. 
Language of Command, in the army 

of Austria-Hungary, 307. 
Laon, 476, 481, 493. 
Laplace, 71. 
Lapps, 285. 

Lassalle, Ferdinand, 530, 533. 
Law of Associations, 228. 
Law of Papal Guarantees, 345. 
"League of Nations," 502, 512-14. 
Legitimists in France, 217. 
Leisure, 64, 65. 
Lenine, Nicolai, 504, 537, 542, 543, 

544, 545. 
Lens, 514. 
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, 391, 

392. 
Leopold, Prince, of Hohenzollern, 

133. 
Lepanto, 116 316. 
Lesseps, FercHnand de, 374, 375. 
Levellers, 74. 

Liao-tung Peninsula, 294, 296, 297. 
Liao-yang, 296. 

Libera Chiesa in Stato Libera, 345. 
Liberal Party, advocates Home Rule 

for Ireland, 261. 
Liberals in Great Britain, 248. 
Liberia, 371, 515. 
Liberty, Egaliie, Fraternite, 27. 
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 633. 
Liege, 459, 460. 
"Light Year," 69. 
Lighting, Arti6cial, 41, 43, 44. 



Liliencron, song of, 122. 

Limitation of Armaments, opposed 
by the German Empire, 206. 

Liquid Fire, 482. 

Lithuania, 276, 285. 

Little Russians, in Austria-Hungary, 
310, 311. 

Liverpool, 13, 412, 533, 

Livingstone, 391. 

Livonia, 286. 

Local Government, reformed in Rus- 
sia, 112, 273; in France, 215, 221; 
in England, 220, 221. 

Lombardy, 114. 

London Protocol, 128. 

Lorraine, 136. 

"Lost Provinces," 431. 

Louis XIV, King of France, 95, 124, 
211, 354, 424, 506. 

Louis XV, King of France, 506. 

Louis XVI, King of France, 20, 23, 290. 

Louis Napoleon, 26. 

Louvain, 485. 

Lowe, Robert, 247. 

Lower Austria, 310. 

Lucretius, 70. 

Luderitz, 386. 

Lule-Biu-gas, 328. 

Lusitania, 479. 

Luther, 80, 90. 

Lutheran Church, 90, 226, 363. 

Luxemburg, 118, 132, 446. 

Lvov, Prince, 540, 542. 

Lyell, Sir Charles, 71, 87. 

Macaulay, on the suffrage, 31. 

Macedonia, 325, 326, 340. 

Machinery, Labor-saving, 44. 

Machines, 45-8. 

Mackensen, von, 468. 

MacMahon, 136, 217. 

McCrae, Lieut.-Col. John, 450. 

Madagascar, 236, 384. 

Magyars, 37, 108, 109, 116, 306, 310. 

Malays in the British Empire, 380. 

Malta, 374. 

Manchuria, 294, 297, 298. 

Manhood Suffrage, in France, 21, 
30, 31; obstacles to, 30. 31; in 
Spain, 32; in Austria, 32; in the 
United States, 33; in Norway, 365. 

Manifeste dcs Egaitx, 75. 

Manifesto of the Communist Party, 5Q, 
60, 79, 80, 82, 529. 

Manoel II, King of Portugal, 353. 

Manorial Obligations, abolished in 
France, 21, 23; abolished in Russia, 
112; in Rumania, 338. 



INDEX 



571 



Manorial Eights, in France, 19. 

Manufacturing tiefore the Industrial 
Revolution, 9. 

Marat, 22. 

March Laws, 33. 

Marchand, Major, 384. 

Marechal, Sylvain, 75. 

Maria Christina, Queen Mother, rules 
Spain, 350. 

Marne, Battle of the, 134, 461-3; 
Second Battle of the, 491. 

Marseillaise, 169. 

Martinique, 382. 

Marx, Karl, 10; on the hourgeoisie, 
56; on Capital and Labor, 67; 
career of, 79-81; doctrines of, 81-4; 
influence of, 529, 530; opposed to an- 
archism, 531 ; in England, 535. 

Matches, Friction, 44. 

Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, 308. 

Mazurian Lakes, 467. 

IVIazzini, 114. 

Mechanical Invention, in the nine- 
teenth century, 10. 

Mediterranean Sea, 12, 14; agreement 
concerning, 183, 267; trade-route 
through, 196; Turkish power in, 
316; controlled by the British, 375, 
429; havoc 'WTOUght by submarines 
in, 484. 

Mehemet Ali, 320, 321. 

Mensheviki, 540. 

Mercenaries, 123, 124; Swiss. 360. 

Merchant Ships, sunk by submarines, 
479. 

Mesopotamia, 435. 

Messines Ridge, 480. 

Metternich, Prince, 24, 25, 106, 320, 
335. 

Metz, 136, 137, 138, 493. 

Mexico, 308, 383. 

Middle Eiu-ope, 435, 436. 

Militarism, in Prussia, 167, 168; 
growth of in Europe, 190; in Europe, 
424-6; in antiquity, 424; in the 
German Empire, 438. 

Military Convention between Russia 
and France, 235. 

Military Law of Boyen (1813), 125, 
424. 

Military Power Altered by the In- 
dustrial Revolution, 59, 60. 

Military Strategy, 127. 

Miliukov, Professor, 300, 540, 542. 

Mill, J. S., 63, 231, 243. 

Milton, John, 17, 68, 240. 

"Ministries" in Austria-Hungary, 
305. 



Ministry, in the United Kingdom, 97; 
in Prussia, 97; in France, 97, 104. 

Mir, 272, 301. 

Mischoz, 332. 

Mitrailleuse, 134. 

Mitfeleuropa, 195, 190. 

Mobilization, 444. 

Mohammedans in the British Empire, 
380. 

Moldavia, see Danvbian Principali- 
ties. 

Moltke, Hellmuth von, 126, 127, 128, 
130, 133, 135, 136; on peace and 
war, 438. 

Monarchy, relics of cherished in Great 
Britain, 224; restoration of desired 
in France, 224. 

Monasteries, suppression of in Po- 
land, 276. 

Mongols, 316. 

Monroe Doctrine, 434. 

Mons, 460. 

Montalembert, 17. 

Montdidier, 492. 

Montenegro, declares war on Tur- 
key, 327; in the Balkan Wars, 327- 
31; history of, 332; conditions in, 
332; in the Balkan Crisis of 1912-13, 
417; expected to join a South Slavic 
federation, 510. 

Monte Santo, 483-4. 

Montesquieu, 20, 74, 117. 

Moravia, 310, 507. 

More, Sir Thomas, 74. 

Morocco, acquired by France, 384, 
415; penetration of by the French, 
411; German rights in, 515; rights 
of Austria in, 517. 

Morocco Crisis of 1905, 402, 403. 

Morocco Crisis of 1911, 411-16. 

Morris, William, 535. 

Moscow. 15, 235, 292, 542. 

Mountains of Europe, 13. 

Mozambique, 390. 

Mukden, Battle of, 296, 402. 

Municipal Government in the Ger- 
man Empire, 151, 152. 

Namur, 458, 459. 

Napoleon, 14, 21; rise of, 22; work of, 
23; hostility to, 24; wars of, 24, 
35, 36, 95, 213; French Revolution 
saved by, 24; on aristocracy, 55; 
relations of with the Church, 85-7, 
227; power of, 102; rearranges cen- 
tral Europe, 105; invasion of Rus- 
sia by, 235, 

Napoleon III, Emperor of France, 



572 



INDEX 



26, 94; foreign policy of, 103. 104; 
waning popularity of the govern- 
ment of, 131; diplomacy of before 
the Franco-German War, 131-3; 
in the war, 136, 137; maintains the 
temporal power of the Pope, 180, 
181, 345; leader in the Crimean 
War, 235; assists the Rumanians to 
unite the Danubian Principalities, 
337; assists the Italians, 344; 
intrigues of concerning Belgium, 359. 

Napoleonic Empire, 102. 

Natal, 376. 

Nation, original meaning of the word, 
34. 

National Armies, 124, 125. 

National Assembly, in France (1789), 
20; of Russia, 299. 

National Convention (France, 1792), 
21. 

National Council (Swiss), 861. 

National Debt of France, 223, 525. 

National Debts, 524, 525. 

National Guard in Paris, 212. 

National Insurance Act, 249. 

"National Notables," 31. 

National Wealth, of the principal 
European countries, 156, 157; of 
France, 230. 

National Workshops, 77, 78. 

Nationalism, in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, 8; in the nineteenth century, 
9; in France during the French 
Revolution, 22; development of, 
34-7; disintegrating effects of, 
37; in Central Europe, 106; among 
the Poles of the German Empire, 
170; strength of in Russia, 289; 
in the German Empire, 289; in 
Italy, 348; in Holland, 356. 

Nationality, 34-7. 

"Natm-al Laws," 50. 

"Naval Holiday," 206. 

Naval Laws (German), 200, 201, 400. 

Naval Panic of 1909, ^03, 204. 

Naval Power, reliance of Great Bri- 
tain on, 199, 200; development of 
in the German Empire, 200, 201. 

Navarino, 321. 

Near East, 324. 

Nebular Hypothesis, 71. 

Needle Gun. 130. 

Negroes in the British Empire, 380. 

Nekrasov, 269. 

Nepal, 379. 

Neptune, 69. 

Netherlands, in earlier times, 354, 355; 
revolt of, 354, 358. 



Netherlands, Austrian, 355, 358; 
Dutch, 355; Spanish, 355. 

Neubreisach, 458. 

Neutrality of Belgium and of Lux- 
emburg violated by the German 
Empire, 446. 

Neutralization of Belgium, 359; of 
Switzerland, 360; of Norway, 365. 

Neuve Chapelle, 475. 

New Brunswick, 373. 

New England, 29. 

New Guinea, 391. 

New Lanark, 76. 

New South Wales, 373. 

New Zealand, 380. 

Newcomen, Thomas, 4?. 

Newfoundland, 372. 

Newspapers, in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, 9; in the nineteenth cen- 
tmy, 11. 

Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia, 24, 111. 

Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, 269; 
character and policy of, 290-1; 
reign of, 290-302; urges disarma- 
ment, 426; works for world peace, 
502; abdication of, 539; murder of, 
544. 

Nihilists, 279, 283. 

"No Annexations and No Indemni- 
ties," 504, 541. 

Nobles, in the eighteenth centiu-y, 8; 
in the nineteenth century. 9; eman- 
cipation of serfs by in Russia, 
270. 

Non Expedit, 346. 

Non Licet, 346. 

Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung^ 398. 

Normandy, 363. 

Normans, 15. 256. 

North German Confederation, 27, 32, 
96, 107, 131, 134-6. 

North German Lloyd Steamship 
Company, 155. 

North Sea, 13, 354, 428. 

Norway, 118, 362, 363, 364, 365. 

Nova Scotia, 373. 

Novi-Bazar, Sanjak of, 334. 

Obrenovich. Milosh, 332, 
Obrenovich Family, 333. 
October Manifesto, 299, 300. 
"Octobrists," 300. 
Officers, in war, 452. 
Oil, used for lighting, 44. 
Old Age Insurance Laws, 163. 
Old Age Pension Act, 249. 
Old Catholics, 159. 
Old Colonial System, 393. 



INDEX 



573 



Old Regime, 41. 

Ollivier, Emile, 165. 

Omdurman, 376. 

Ontario, 373. 

"Open Covenants," 601. 

Opium Traffic, 377, 378. 

"Opium War," 377. 

Orange Free State, 376. 

"Organic Laws," 217. 

Organisation du Travail, 77. 

Origin of Species, 71. 

Orlando, 504. 

Orleans, House of, 217. 

Orleans Monarchy, 382. 

Orthodox Church, 84, 85, 284, 285, 

» 288, 289. 

Osman Pasha, 323. 

Ottoman Empire, in earlier times, 
116, 117; in the first half of the 
nineteenth century, 117, 118; decay 
of, 314; decline of, 316, 317; gov- 
ernment of, 317. 

Owen, Robert, 76, 78, 79, 535. 

Oxford. 247. 

Psestmn, 15. 

Pan-Germanism, 289. 

Pan-Slavism, 289, 419. 

Panama, 10, 375. 

Pankhurst, Emmeline, 245. 

Papacy, 227. 

Papal Infallibility, 67, 90, 159. 

Papal States, 85. 

Paradise Lost, 68. 

Paris, siege of, 138; surrender of, 
139; in 1871, 212, 213; socialist 
commune in, 212-14; industrial 
disorders in, 533. 

Parliament of Great Britain, 19, 32, 
256. 

Parliament, Independent, in Ireland, 
258. 

Parliament Act of 1911, 253, 255, 261. 

Parliamentary Representation in 
Great Britain, 241. 

Parnell, C. S., 261. 

Partitions of Poland, 276. 

Patriotism, 393. 

Peace Conferences, 426, 427. 

Peace of Paris, 373. 

Peasant Proprietors in France, 23. 

Peasants, in France, condition of 
bettered, 22; purchase land in 
France, 75, 231; in Russia, condi- 
tion of. 111, 272, 273, 291; become 
landowners in Russia, 231; condi- 
tion of in Ireland, 258, 259; acquire 
ownership of land in Ireland, 260; 



condition of in Poland, 278; owner- 
ship of land by in Servia, 334. 

People, Lower Class of, condition of 
in the Old Regime, 8, 17. 

Peronne, 476, 477. 

Persia, 370, 378, 379, 405. 

Petrograd, 538, 539. 

Philip II, King of Spain, 358, 

Philippine Islands, 390. 

Piedmont, suffrage in, 32; leader of 
the Italian people, 114. 

Piraeus, 335. 

Pitt, William, the Younger, 258. 

Pius VII, Pope, 226. 

Pius IX, Pope, 89, 345, 346. 

Plagues, 43. 

Plato, 73. 

Plehve, von, 283, 290, 298. 

Plevna, 323. 

Pobiedonostsev, 269, 281, 282, 290, 299. 

Poison Gases, 427. 

Poland, partitions of, 110; rebellion of 
1863 in, 274; desire for independ- 
ence in, 276; complete subjection 
of, 276; conditions in, 278; former 
greatness of, 285; strategical posi- 
tion of in Russia, 287; attempted 
Russificationof, 288; tributary to the 
Turks, 316; leading Slavic state, 
433; battles in, 468, 469; German 
methods in, 485; question of, 508; 
in 1920, 521, 522; lost to Russia, 543; 
at war with the Bolshcriki, 544. 

Poles, in the German Empire, 170, 
171; of Russia, 280; disturbances 
among, 298; concessions to, 299; 
in Austria-Hungary, 310, 311. 

"Polish Corridor,' 514. 

Polish Language, 170. 

Polish Nationalism, 170. 

Polish Rebellion of 1863, 179. 

Popes, 85, 180, 181. 

Population, increase of in Europe, 
56; in Great Britain, 56, 57, 430; 
in the German Empire, 57, 58, 157, 
158, 430; decline of in Ireland, 99, 
430; growth of in the principal 
European countries, 157; increase 
of in Italy, 348; in Japan, 348; 
room for growth of, 429, 430; 
growth of in France, 430. 

Port Arthur, 294, 296, 297. 

Portugal, palaces of, 14; history of in 
the nineteenth century, 352-4; 
controls the sea-routes to the east, 
372; colonies of, 390. 

Portuguese Colonies, alleged secret 
agreement about, 353, 387, 388. 



574 



INDEX 



Portuguese East Africa, 387, 390. 

Portuguese Republic, 353, 354. 

Posen, 170, 284, 287, 514. 

Potsdam Accord, 409, 412. 

Poverty in Great Britain, 252. 

Prince Edward Island, 373, 

Principles of Geology, 71. 

Printing-press, Power, 11. 

" Prisoners of the^Vatican," 346. 

Production, increased, 11. 

Profit-sharing, 76. 

Proletariat, 81, 82. 

Protective Tariffs, in the German 
Empire, 154, 155; in Austria- 
Hungary, 307. 

Protestant Churches, 90; in the nine- 
teenth century, 91. 

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 279, 280, 
530, 531. 

Prussia, education in, 11; reforms in, 
25; abolition of serfdom in, 25; 
Revolution of 1848 in, 27, 106; 
constitution granted in, 27; nation- 
alism in, 36; leader of the German 
states, 107; military triumphs of, 
122-41; foundation of the greatness 
of, 124; development of the army of, 
124-6; at war with Dermiark, 127-9; 
with Austria, 129-31; with France, 
131-41; makes alliance with Italy, 
129; army of in the Austro-Prussian 
War, 131; army of in the Franco- 
German War, 135, 136; govern- 
ment in, 167; friendship of with 
Russia, 178, 179; beginning of, 193, 
433; development of the army of, 
424, 425. 

Prussian Army, development of, 424, 
425. 

Prussian Guard, 462. 

"Public Schools," 247. 

Punch, 188. 

Puritan Revolution, 242. 

Pyrenees Mountains, 12, 13. 

Quakers, 242. 

Quanta Cura, 89. 

Quebec, 373. 

Qu'est-ce que la Propriete?, 530. 

Racial Differences in European Coun- 
tries, 284. 

Racial Superiority, belief in, 437. 

Racial Unity, desire for, 283, 284, 

Radicalism, in France, 104, 105; 
in Russia, 278, 279. 

Railroads, 11, 41, 291, 454. 

Reason, Worship of in France, 22, 86. 



"Red Sunday," 299. 

Redistribution Act of 1885, 241. 

Redmond, John, 261. 

Referendum, 362. 

Reflections of Pobiedonostsev, 281. 

Reformation, 62, 158. 

Reicfisland, 145, 169. 

Reichsrath, 310, 311, 

Reichstag, 145. 

Reign of Terror, 22, 24, 86. 

"Reinsurance Treaty," 186, 192. 

Religion, troubled by the doctrine 
of evolution, 72, 73; in France, 227, 
228, 230. 

Religious Belief, in the eighteenth 
century, 8; conflict of with scien- 
tific thought, 10. 

Religious Liberty in the Turkish Em- 
pire, 317. 

Religious Orders in France, 228. 

Report of the British Labor Com- 
mittee, 251. 

Representation of Industries and 
Groups, 246, 247. 

Representative Government, origin 
and development of, 29. 

Republic, established in France, 21; 
becomes militant, 24; in England, 
28; second, established in France, 
103, 219, 220; third, 212; in Spain, 
350; in Portugal, 353, 354. 

Republic of Plato, 73. 

"Revenge for Sadowa," 132. 

Reventlow, Count Ernst zu, 240. 

Revolution of 1830, 24. 

Revolution of 1848, 25, 77, 106, 109, 
301. 

Revolution of 1905 in Russia, 298- 
300. 

Revolution of 1917 in Russia, 231; 
beginning of, 539; first stage of, 540; 
second stage of, 542-6; results of, 546. 

Revolutionary War, 100. 

Rheims, 15, 486, 491. 

Rhodes, Cecil, 377. 

Rigsdag, 366. 

Risorgimento, 114. 

Rivet Law, 215. 

Robespierre, 22, 74, 545. 

Roman Catholic Church, in the nine- 
teenth century, 85-90; in the Ger- 
man Empire, 159, 170; in France, 
226-30; in Poland, 286; in Italy, 
345, 346. 

Roman Catholics, religious disabili- 
ties removed from, 31, 98; in Ire- 
land, 99; in the German Empire, 
159, 160. 



INDEX 



575 



Roman Empire. S4, 62, 232, 370, 371. 

Romanovs, Dynasty of, end of, 539. 

Rome, 114, 115, 344, 345, 370. 

Roon, von, 126. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 297. 

Rousseau, 8, 20, 28, 29, 49, 74, 80. 

Rudolph, Archduke, of Austria, 308. 

Rigby, 247. _ 

Rumania, wins autonomy, 117; con- 
ditions in in 1S70, 118; attached 
to the Triple Alliance. 184, 314; 
enters the Second Balkan War, 
331, 337; history of, 336-8; domes- 
tic affairs of, 338, 339; enters the 
Great War, 478; conquered, 478; in 
1920, 521. 

Rumanians, union of assisted by 
Napoleon III, 103; in Hungary, 
306; in Austria-Hungary, 310, 314. 

Rumelia, 319. 

Rural Life, predominance of before 
the Industrial Revolution, 00. 

Russia, little affected by the French 
Revolution, 25; nationalism in, 36; 
Industrial Revolution in, 54, 291, 
292; religion of, 84, 85; earlier 
history of, 109, 110; in the nine- 
teenth century, 110, 111; govern- 
ment of. 111, 112; reforms in, 112; 
rivalry of with Austria-Hungary, 
175, 176, 178; friendship of with 
Prussia, 179; new agreement of 
with the Central Powers, 185, 186; 
secret treaty of with the German 
Empire, 186; attitude of in the 
Affair of 1875, 234; makes the Dual 
Alliance with France, 235; rela- 
tions of with Great Britain, 265, 
404; under Alexander II, 269-281; 
abolition of serfdom in, 270-4; 
reform of the judicial system in, 
273; reform of local government 
in, 273, 274; discontent in, 274; 
crushes the Polish rel)ellion, 276; 
increase of discontent in, 278; nihil- 
ism in, 279; anarchists in, 279, 
280; activities of radicals in, 280, 
281; under Alexander III, 281-90; 
reaction in, 282, 283; policy of Rus- 
sification in, 283, 284, 287, 288, 
289; peoples in, 284-7; unification 
of peoples in desired, 287; extreme 
nationalism in, 289; corruption 
and ineflSciency of the government 
in, 289, 290; under Nicholas II, 
290-302; foreign relations of, 292-4; 
at war with Japan, 291-8: accepts 
the Treaty of Portsmouth, 297, 



298; discontent in, 298; revolution 
in, 298-300; reaction in, 299-301; 
before the Great War, 302; foreign 
policy of, 302; relations of with 
Austria-Hungary, 313; thwarted 
at the Congress of Berlin, 313; 
southern part of conquered by the 
Turks, 316; expansion of at the 
expense of the Turks, 318; assists 
the Greeks to win independence, 
S21; makes war on Turkey, 323; 
obtains a sphere of influence in 
Persia, 379; in the Bosnia-Herzego- 
vinajCrisis, 406-8; recovers strength, 
410; in the Balkan Crisis of 1912-13, 
416, 417; outlets of, 428; leader of 
the Slavs, 433; negotiations of with 
Germany, 443; collapse of in the 
Great War, 481, 482; losses of, 521, 
522; socialism in, 537-46; effects 
of the Great War in, 538, 539; under 
the Bolsheviki, 542-6; accepts the 
Peace of Brcst-Litovsk, 542, 543. 

Russian Empire, end of, 521, 522. 

Russian Revolution of 1905, 298-300; 
failure of, 301. 

Russian Revolution of 1917, 231, 
482, 522; cause of, 539-46; results 
of, 546. 

Russians, defeat the Austrians, 467; 
overrun Galicia, 467; defeated at 
Tannenberg, 467; capture Przem- 
ysl, 468; strive to win the Car- 
pathian passes, 468; defeated dis- 
astrously at the Dunajec, 468; re- 
treat of, 468, 409; last offensive of, 
477; withdraw from the War, 481, 
482; endurance of, 482. 

Russification of Poland, attempted, 
278; policy of, 283, 284, 287-90. 

Russo-Japanese War, lessons of, 202, 
203; course of, 294-8; consequences 
of in Europe, 402, 404; in Asia, 434. 

Russo-Turkish War, 178, 205, 313. 
323, 339, 404. 

Ruthenians, in Austria-Hungary, 310, 
311. 

Saar Basin, 514. 
Sabotage, 412, 533. 
Sagasta, 351. 
Sahara, 383, 384. 
St. Mihiel. 493. 
St. Petersburg, 292, 299. 
St. Quentin, 476, 490. / 
Saint-Simon, 10, 76, 77. 
Sakhalin, 297. 
Salisbury, Lord, 193. 400. 



576 



INDEX 



Salonica, 198, 312; captured by the 
Greeks, 327, 335; occupied by the 
Allies, 336, 472, 493. 

Salzburg, 15. 310, 

Samoan Islands, 386. 

Sarajevo, 308, 315, 440. 

Sardinia, Kingdom of, 114, 344. 

Scandinavian Countrie?, in 1870, 118; 
earlier history of, 362, 363; in the 
nineteenth century, 363-6. 

Scharnhorst, 125. 

Schiller, 450. 

Schleswig, 118, 127-9, 131, 284, 366. 

Schleswig-Holstein, question of, 127, 
128; war about, 128, 129. 

Schnffibele Affair, 234, 235. 

Science, conflict of with religion, 
87, 88, 91. 

Scientific Progress, 10, 87, 88. 

Scotland, 58, 95. 

"Scrap of Paper," 189, 409, 446. 

Scutari, 327, 328, 329, 417. 

Second Balkan War, 315, 329, 331. 

Second Empire (French), 96, 103, 383. 

Second Hague Conference, 206, 427. 

Secret German Report, alleged, on 
German expansion, 398. 

Sedan, 137. 

Self-government, progress of in Eu- 
rope, 20-4, 25-33; advanced by 
the Industrial Revolution, 60, 61; 
development of in France, 219, 220; 
in the British Empire, 381. 

Senate of the United States, 256, 518. 

Serbs, in Austria-Hungary, 310; help 
to defeat the Bulgars, 493. 

"Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," State 
of, 516, 521, 522. 

Serfdom, 8, 17, 18, 19; abolished in 
France, 20, 23, 271; disappearance 
of in the various countries of Eu- 
rope, 25; abolition of in Russia, 
112, 270, 271; disappearance of in 
England, 271; results of the aboli- 
tion of in Russia, 272, 273; end of 
in Europe, 271; end of in Rumania, 
338. 
Sergei, Grand Duke, 298. 
Servia, relations of with Auatria- 
Hungary, 315; with Russia, 315; 
beginning of the struggle for the 
independence of, 319; in the Balkan 
Wars, 327-31, 333, 334; history of, 
332, 333; foreign relations of, 333, 
334; in the Great War, 334; after 
the War, 334, 510; conditions in, 
334; in the Bosnia-Herzegovina 
Crisis, 407, 408; strives for an out- 



let on the Adriatic, 416; appeals 
to Russia for support, 441; accused 
of complicity in the crime of Sara- 
jevo, 440; largely yields to the Aus- 
trian demands, 442; conquered by 
the Teutonic Powers, 469, 470; Ger- 
man methods in, 485. 
Seven Years War, 373, 382. 
Shantung, 515. 
Shaw, G. B., 536. 
Shelley, 304. 
"Shining Armor," 408. 
Siam. 515, 517. 
Siberia, 280, 293, 298. 
Sickness Insurance Law, 163. 
Sinn Fein, 37, 263, 264, 265. 
Skuyshtina, 334. 
Slavery, in the United States, 25, 271 ; 

in Brazil, 25, 271. 
Slavonia, 510. 

Slavs, in Austria-Hungary, 306; in 
Greece in the Middle Ages, 336; 
rivalry of with the Teutons, 433-0; 
position of in 1920, 522. 
Slivnitsa, 333, 340. 
Slovaks, 311, 507. 
Slovenes, 310. 
Smith, Adam, 49. 
Sobranje, 341. 

Social Democratic Federation, 535. 
Social Democratic Party (German 

Empire), 166. 
Social Democratic Party (Russia), 

292, 533, 534, 540. 
"Social Workshops," 77. 
Socialism, 10; origin of, 73; develop- 
ment of, 73-81; doctrines of, 81-4; 
effects of upon the Church, 87; 
condemned by the Roman Cath- 
olic Church, 89; in France, 104, 
105; growth of in the German Em- 
pire, 161, 162; repression of, 102; 
in Great Britain, 251; in Russia, 
292; spread of, 529, 530; discon- 
tent with the progress of, 531; 
spread of in the German Empire, 
533, 534; in Austria-Hungary, 534; 
in France, 534, 535; in Great Bri- 
tain, 535-7; in Russia, 537-46. 
Socialist, origin of the term, 76. 
Socialist Party in the German Empire, 

163. 
Socialist Revolutionary Party, 292. 
Soissons, 492. 

Somme, Battle of the, 476, 477. 
Sonderbund, 119, 361. 
Sorel, Georges, 529. 
South Africa, 357, 380. 



INDEX 



577 



South Slavs, 310, 314, 433, 434. 

Soviet Government, decrees of, 59,Q. 

Soviets, 542, 543. 

Spain, disappearance of serfdom in, 
25; constitution proclaimed in, 26, 
27; suffrage in, 32; nationalism in, 
34-6; Industrial Revolution in, 54; 
rules part of Italy, 113; in earlier 
times, 115; in 1870, 116; throne of 
vacant, 133; relations of with the 
Triple Alliance, 183; decline of, 211; 
history of oince 1870, 350, 351; gov- 
ernment of, 351; conditions in, 352; 
colonial empire of lost, 372, 390. 

Spanish Republic, 350. 

"Spartacides," 520. 

Spencer, Herbert, 72. 

"Spheres of Influence" in China, 378. 

Spicheren, 136. 

Spies, 136, 426, 455. 

Spinning "Jenny," 45. 

"Spinning-Mule," 46. 

"Splendid Isolation," 96, 175, 401. 

Stadtholder, 355. 

Stambulov, 340. 

Standard of Living, 230, 231. 

Standing Armies, 425. 

Stanley, 391. 

"State of Nature," 20, 30. 

State Socialism, 162, 163, 167, 249. 

States General, 254, 357. 

Slatuto Fondameniale del Regno, 345. 

Steam, 41. 

Steam Engine, 9, 41, 42. 

Steamboat, 41, 42. 

Steamship, 10. 

Stein, vom, 125. 

Stephenson, George, 42. 

Stolypin, 301. 

Storthing, 364, 365. 

Straits Settlements, 373. 

Strassburg, 138, 458. 

Strategic Railways, 426. 

Strikes, 532. 

Stromboli, 15. 

Styria, 310. 

Subject Races, 168-171. 

Submarines, 10, 478-80, 484, 488, 489. 

Sudan, 876. 

Suez Canal, 10, 11, 374, 375. 

Suffrage, in Europe in the eighteenth 
century, 8; universal, 17; in France 
in 1791, 2C; in the United States, 
30; in France, 30, 31; in Great Bri- 
tain, 80; extension of in central and 
southern Europe, 32, 33; extension 
of in the United Kingdom, 96; 
in Russia, 293, 301; in Austria, 310, 



311; in Hungary, 312; in Italy, 345; 
in Spain, 351; in Holland, 357; in 
Belgium, 359, 360; in Norway, 364, 
365; in Denmark, 366, 367. 

Suffragettes, 245, 246. 

Sumatra, 391. 

Sweden, suffrage in, 33; decline of, 
211; in earlier times, 363; in tiie 
nineteenth century, 364, 365; gov- 
ernment of, 864. 

Swedes in Russia, 363. 

Swedish Culture in Finland, 285. 

Swiss, obtain their freedom from Aus- 
tria, 360. 

Swiss Cantons, government in, 18. 

Swiss Confederation, 360. 

Switzerland, suffrage in, 33; neutrali- 
zation of, 118; education in, 248; 
earlier history of, 360; in the nine- 
teenth century, 360, 361; govern- 
ment of, 361, 362; conditions in, 362. 

Syllabus of Errors, 89. 

Syndicalism, 531-3. 

Syndical, 532. 

Table of Magnates, 312. 

Taff Vale Case, 249, 250. 

Take Your Choice, 30. 

Talleyrand, 102. 

"Tanks," 494. 

Tannenberg, Battle of, 467. 

Taxation in Italy, 347. 

Tchataldja Lines, 328. 

Telegraph, 11,41. 

Telephone, 41. 

Terrorists, 281. 

Teutonic Race, alleged superiority 

of, 437. 
Teutons, rivalry of with the Slavs, 

433-6. 
Textile Industry, 45, 46. 
"They Shall Not Pass," 476. 
Thiers, L. A., 214, 520. 
Third Estate, 20. 
Third Republic (French), 212, 215, 

217, 224, 227, 228. 
Thirteen Colonies, independence of, 

257 373. 
Thirty Years War, 123, 153, 158, 363, 

451, 498. 
Three-class System of Voting, 140, 273. 
Tibet, 378, 379, 405. 
Tirpitz, Admiral von, 200. 
Togo, Admiral, 297. 
Togoland, 386. 
Tonkin, 383. 
Toynbee, Arnold, 40. 
Trade Unions, bd, 98, 249, 250, 532. 



578 



INDEX 



Trades Disputes Act, 250. 

Trafalgar, 201. 

Tram Cars, 10. 

Trans-Siberian Railway, 293, 294. 

Transportation, revolution in, 42. 

Transvaal, 376. 

Transylvania, 310, 314, 317, 337, 338, 
521. 

Travel, 9, 10. 

Treaty of Adrianople, 319, 321, 332, 
336. 

Treaty of Berlin, 178, 323, 324, 337, 
339, 340, 405, 406. 

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 482, 515, 
517, 542, 543. 

Treaty of Bucharest, 331, 334, 337, 
341. 

Treaty oi Carlowitz, 317. 

Treaty of Frankfort, 139-41, 153. 

Treaty of London, 319. 328, 335. 

Treaty of Portsmouth, 297, 298. 

Treaty of Prague, 131, 175. 

Treaty of St. Germain, 338, 516, 517. 

Treaty of San Stefano, 319, 323, 332, 
339. 

Treaty of Sevres, 517, 518. 

Treaty of Utrecht, 176, 254, 358, 
373. 

Treaty of Versailles, 512-16, 518, 519. 

Treaty of Vienna, 128, 129. 

"Treaty Ports," 377. 

Treitschke, 122, 143. 

Trentino, 310, 349, 477. 

Trevithick, Richard, 42. 

Tribune, New York, 498. 

Trieste, 310, 428, 477, 506. 

Trinidad, 374. 

Triple Alliance, preamble to, 173; 
formation of, 179-82; weakening of, 
182; treaties of, 182, 183; relations 
of with Great Britain, 183, 267; 
Rumania an appendage of, 184, 
314, 315; power of, 184, 185; 
stronger than the Dual Alliance, 
236; Italy helps to make, 349; 
position of, 398; power of rela- 
tively diminished, 417, 418; op- 
posed to the Triple Entente, 423. 

Triple Alliance of Workers in Great 
Britain, 251. 

Triple Entente, 205, 266; formation 
of, 399, 404, 405; increasing strength 
of, 410; opposed to the Triple 
Alliance, 423. 

Tripoli, 324, 325; seized by Italy, 
349, 389, 390. 

Trotzky, 301, 504, 537. 542, 543, 
544. 



Tsardom, fall of the, 539, 540. 

Tsingtao, 472. 

Tsushima, Battle of, 203, 297. 

Tunisia, 181, 383, 384, 389. 

Turco-Italian War, 429. 

Turgeniev, 279. 

Turkestan, 265. 

Turkey, relations of with the German- 
Empire, 193, 194; former greatness 
of, 315; enters the Great War, 470; 
surrenders to the Allies, 493; 
losses of, 517. 

Turkish Empire, rivalry for the pos- 
sessions of, 318; preserved by the 
rivalries of the Great Powers, 
318, 319; dismemberment of, 319- 
31; further decline and losses of, 
324-31; before the Great War, 331; 
African possessions of lost, 390; 
loses Bosnia and Herzegovina, 405-8. 

TiU"ks, earlier greatness of, 315; char- 
acter of, 325; incapacity of in gov- 
ernment, 325. 

"Two-Power Standard," British na^ 
val policy, 199. 

Uganda, 376. 

Ukraine, 284, 287, 522, 543. 

Ulster, 99, 257, 263. 

Unification, of Germany, 106, 107; 
of Italy, 114, 115. 

Unionists, of Ulster, 204. 

United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland, suffrage in, 31, 32; 
in 1870, 94; formation of, 95, 258; 
national debt of, 96, 525; govern- 
ment of, 96, 97; extension of the 
franchise in, 240, 241, 246. 

United Netherlands, 355. 

United Provinces, 360. 

United States, slavery in, 25, 271; 
constitution of, 25; franchise in, 
30, 33; relations of with Great Bri- 
tain, 100; recognizes the Third 
(French) Republic, 215; assimila- 
tion of immigrants in, 288; Italians 
in, 348; participates in the Algeciras 
Conference, 403; joins the Allies in 
the Great War, 484-8; refuses to 
accept the Treaty of Versailles, 
518, 519; in 1920, 523. 

Universal Military Service, 124, 125, 
126, 233, 424, 425. 

Universe, 68, 69. 

Universities, 222, 223. 

University Tests Act, 248, 249. 

Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 479, 
480. 



INDEX 



579 



Upper Austria, 310. 
Urban Life, 60, 61. 62. 
Usher, Archbishop, 70. 
Utopia, 74. 

Vatican, 345. 

Vatican Council, 89, 90, 159. 

Venetia, 131, 349. 

Venice, 15, 484. 

Venizelos, 326, 335, 

Verdun, 458, 401, 475, 476. 

Veto, king of England's power of falls 

into disuse, 255. 
"Veto Power" of the House of 

Lords, 254. 
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and 

Ireland, 149, 192, 400. 
Vienna, 15, 116, 117, 305, 316, 317. 
! 517. 
Village Community in Russia, 272, 

989. 
Villeins, 271. 
Vimy, 480. 
Virgil, 450. 
Virginia, 372. 

Virginia Company of London, 370. 
Vladivostok, 293, 294, 296, 428. 
Volga River, 12, 13, 286, 
Voltaire, 20, 228, 437. 
Voyage en Icarie, 79. 

WaUace, A. R., 71. 

"Wallachia, 316; see Danubian Princi- 
palities. 

War, end of desired, 33, 34; glorifica- 
tion of in the German Empire, 
437, 438. 

TVar Material, accumulation of, 425, 

' 426, 453, 454. 

"War of Liberation, 36, 125. 

War of the Nations, 315. 

War of the Spanish Succession, 115, 
372, 373, 498. 

Warsaw, 469, 475, 544. 

Washing, 43^ 

Water, supply of, 42, 43. 

Waterloo, Battle of, 23, 96, 

Watt, James, 42. 

Wealth, distribution of in Great 
Britain, 252. 

Weavers, 48. 

Weaving, 45, 46. 

Webb, Beatrice, 536; Sidney, 536. 

Wei-hai-wei, 378. 

Weitling, Wilhelm, 79. 

Wells, H. G., 536. 

Weltmachi oder Untergang, 438. 



West Indies, 372, 373. 

West Prussia, 170, 514. 

West Slavs, 310. 

White Russians, 285. 

WTiitechapel, 252. 

"Wild Women," 245. 

Wilhelmina, Queen of the Nether- 
lands, 357. 

William I, German Emperor, 148, 
149. 

William II, German Emperor, char- 
acter of, 149, 150; statements of, 
107, 173; takes control of the gov- 
ernment, 191; new policy of with 
Russia, 191, 192; declaration of 
concerning policy, 192; visits of 
to Turkey, 193, 194; on German 
sea power, 201; foreign policy of, 
235; on European conditions in 
1904, 401 ;goes to Tangier, 401 ; in the 
Bosnia-Herzegovina Crisis, 408; on 
the position of France, 414; flight 
of, 520. 

William I, King of the Netherlands, 
355, 356. 

William II, King of the Netherlands, 
357. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 487, 495, 498; 
character and ideals of, 500; "Four- 
teen Points" of, 500-1; at the Con- 
gress of Paris, 504, 511, 512; fails 
to secure ratification of the Treaty 
of Versailles by the United States. 
518, 519. 

Witte, Count Sergei, 291, 299. 

Woman's Age, 64. 

Women, condition of improving, 9; 
position of in earlier times, 62; 
betterment of in the nineteenth 
century, 63, 64; affected by the 
Industrial Revolution, 64; position 
of in Great Britain, 242, 243; move- 
ment to obtain suffrage for, 
241-6. 

Women's Movement, in English- 
speaking countries, 241, 242; in 
Great Britain, 241-6.- 

Women's Suffrage Movement, pro- 
gress of in Great Britain, 243-6; in 
Norway, 365; in Denmark, 367. 

Workers, Industrial, condition of, 10; 
condition of depressed by the Indus- 
trial Revolution, 48-52; condition 
of improved, 52, 53. 

Workingmen's Compensation Act, 
249. 

"World Dominion or Downfall," 
191. 



580' INDEX 

Worth, 136. Ypsilanti, Prince, 320. 

Wrangel, General, 544, 545. Yser River, 4G4. 

Yudenitch, General, 544. 
Young, Arthur, 231. 

Young Ireland, 37, 261. Zabern Affair, 147, 168. 

Young Italy, 114. Zanzibar, 376, 

Young Turk Revolution, 406. Zemstvos, 273, 282. 

Young Turks, 326, 406. Zeppelins, 486. 

Ypres, 15, 464, 475. Zdlverein, 107, 152. 



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